It is no surprise that today Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have become integral to numerous fields, including urban planning, environmental management, public health, and more. Combining GIS with bibliometric studies offers valuable insights into the growth, trends, and focus areas within this discipline. This review will cover key research areas, methodologies, and findings from GIS and bibliometric studies. According to Ergun (2023), GIS technology has seen substantial evolution since 1960s when Roger Tomlinson created the Canada Geographic Information System (CGIS). GIS has evolved throughout the years from basic mapping tools to complicated systems that can do intricate spatial analysis. Its uses were significantly increased in the 2000s with the introduction of the internet and cloud-based GIS. Recent developments have improved GIS's analytical capabilities, such as the use of AI and machine learning. Huang et al. (2022) examined GIS-based landslide susceptibility research in another study, emphasizing the move toward hybrid models and machine learning. Kumar and Khormi (2012) 1 examined the research productivity on remote sensing GIS research in Australia. They identified 10 peer-reviewed journal publications from 1991 to 2010. They identified clusters of research hotspot, institutional collaborations as well as authorship patterns in GIS research. They found that a few clusters were very productive while others increased over time 2, 3, 4, 5. Pandey and Thaker (2016) 6 studied the GIS research publications contributed by Indian researchers during 25 years of study from 1991-2014. They observed nearly 97% growth of GIS research during the study period. Tian et al. (2008) 7 conducted a bibliometric analysis of global research productivity on GIS research published during 1997 to 2006 indexed on the Science Citation Index. This study confirmed the above studies which indicate the rapid growth of GIS research and also identified that the most productive countries are USA, UK, Germany and Netherlands. VOS viewer was used to visualise the most productive authors and co-authors and also identified correlation between GDP and research output. Another study carried out by Alhaider et. al (2014) 8 using SCOPUS database for the period 2000 to 2011 for a quantum of 1,376 papers to identify top productive countries, their research impact, most preferred journals, productive authors, journal, institutions, and collaboration rates. Nath and Jana (2020) examined the research trend in open access GIS research. The paper analysed global output on open access GIS research as indexed in WoS database for the period 2009 to 2018 with respect to growth rate, year-wise publications and citations, major productive countries in addition to international collaborations, most productive authors and their citation impact, preferred journals, top institutions, author's keywords and so on. Liu et al (2015) 9 carried out a study based on the SCIE & SSCI databases, a bibliometric study of published geographical information system (GIS) research was conducted to assess current research trends both statistically and qualitatively throughout the 1961–2010 time frame. The focus of the GIS-related articles was on the distribution of subject categories, source journals, international collaboration, the geographic distribution of authors, the analysis of scientific outputs, the relationship between GIS articles and computer numbers, and the temporal patterns in keyword usage. The findings demonstrated that since 1991, scientific outputs have grown at an exponential rate, as evidenced by rising cooperation indexes, references, and citations. IJGIS was the most productive journal in the field of environmental sciences, multidisciplinary geosciences, ecology, physical geography, water resources, geography, and remote sensing, which were the most commonly used subject categories 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17.

The major objectives of this study are to

The global publication output on the identified search terms yields a total number of 60,865 articles in the English language for a period of 2003-2023 and a total of 4,097 articles published by Indian researchers. The Figure 4, Figure 5 present the year wise publication profile of at the global and Indian level respectively.

The Figure 4, Figure 5 show that there is steady increase in the growth of publications for the period 2003-2023. It is interesting to note that there are no publications recorded for the years 2013 and 2014. After the pandemic, there has been a surge in the R&D output on the GIS arena. India records nearly 7% of contribution to the global output and is ranked as the 3^rd most productive country contributing to global output on GIS literature.

The Annual Growth Rate (AGR) is compared to understand the growth of publications at the global and Indian level. The AGR is used to measure the increase or decrease in the rate of publications over the period of a year. The Table 1 compares the AGR of World as well as Indian R&D output.

Figure 4, Figure 5 indicate a gradual growth of publications in the GIS arena for the study period. However, the AGR calculated indicates that as far as the world output is considered, 2015 (18.9%) is the most productive year followed by 2005 (17.1%) and 2019 (16.8%) and although, the greatest number of publications are published during 2021-2023, it is observed from the Table 1 that the AGR of 2022 (0.2%) and 2023 (-6.3%) is the lowest. The CAGR computed for the R&D output at the world level is found to be 22% which indicates a healthy growth rate of publications in the field of Geographic Information Systems. Comparatively the CAGR for R&D output of India is calculated at 30% which indicates a healthy growth rate of research publications in the GIS arena. It is also noted that the AGR increase corresponds to that of the global levels with 2005 (103%) and 2015 (54%) corresponding to the annual growth rate of the publications at the global level.

The country wise R&D output on GIS for the study period of the top 50 countries is presented in the Figure 6. It is observed that out of the 202 countries contributing to research output on the WoS database, USA leads with 14,752 records, the People’s Republic of China with 10,711 records at the second place followed by India at the third place with 4,097 records. Together the top 3 prolific countries contribute to more than 45% of the total global output on GIS. It is a notable finding that the publication output of India has doubled, and India has evolved as the third most productive hub of GIS publications at the global level. The other prolific countries are Italy, England, Australia, Canada, Germany, Spain, Iran, and Turkey which contribute to more than 3% of the global output each. Together they contribute to 36% of the total global output.

On comparing the most prolific affiliations and institutions contributing towards R&D output on GIS, it is observed that the Chinese Academy of Science is ranked at the top based on the quantum of publication output, followed by the University of California at the second place and the Egyptian Knowledge Bank as the third most productive institution. It is interesting to note that 4 of the top 10 institutions contributing to the world’s output on GIS are located in China, while 3 are from USA, 1 each from Egypt, France and India. The Table 2 shows that the IIT system, leading group of institutes in India (7^th rank) are among the top 10 most productive institutions contributing to GIS output. It is also noted that the four other Indian Institutions feature at the top 50 of the most productive institutions, this is corroborated in Table 3 which lists the top 10 prolific Indian affiliations contributing to the R&D output on GIS.

It is observed from Table 3, that the top 10 institutions together contribute to nearly 68%, more than half of the total Indian R&D output. It is also observed that one state funded university – Anna University, Chennai is among the top 10 Indian Institutions; University of Madras is at 140^th position, whereas IIT Madras is at 55^th rank.

resents the top 10 mostprolific journals that publish the highest number of articles on GIS during the study period, together they contribute to 14% of the total global output. Though these journals produce the highest quantum of journal articles, their impact factor, which is a quality indicator calculated based on the total number of citations received ranges between 1-9. The highest impact factor is that of the journal Science of the Total Environment (8^th rank), a multi-disciplinary journal published by Science Direct.

Table 5 represents the top 10 journal titles, preferred by Indian researchers to share their research output on GIS. It is noted that 2 of the top 10 globally prolific journals – Environmental Earth Sciences and Environmental Monitoring and Assessment both published by Springer are among the top 10 most prolific journal avenues of Indian R&D. The impact factor is also found to be low between 1-6. It is suggested that Indian researchers must explore better avenues of research and increase their publication of higher impact factor journals.

On studying the Indian R&D output of 4,097 records, it is observed that India collaborates with a total of 118 countries and the most prolific collaborations are presented in the Figure 7. It is seen that India’s collaboration is found to be the highest with USA with 5% of the total quantum. It is also found that the top 10 collaborating countries contribute to more than 25% of the total collaboration status of India. A healthy collaborative activity indicates a mutually rewarding partnerships, through sharing knowledge and resources amongst collaborating countries.