A Bibliometric Analysis of Simulation Studies in the Field of Container Logistics Using VOSviewer

Productive and uninterrupted operation of ports and their provision of value-added services to customers have become necessities brought about by competition. A performance measurement tool is needed in ports to ensure that the service ports provide is uninterrupted and productive. Four basic logistics processes occur in container terminals: ship operations, transportation, storage, and handling of containers in the port area. Thus, this study aims to develop a logistics-oriented decision support model that will function as a decision support tool for port management to help in understanding, analyzing, and evaluating a port’s logistics structure and port performance indicators for planning port capacity, increasing port productivity, improving intra-port logistics processes, and predicting a port’s future needs. This study offers an extensive analysis of the literature on simulating the processes in container terminals using the bibliometric analysis method. The study preforms an in-depth analysis of 51 studies in the Scopus database. The study also performs co-citation and author-keyword analyses on the obtained data with the help of the software program VOSviewer. The study concludes by presenting authors some recommendations based on the analyzed studies.