Collaboration or competition? A science map for promoting the sustainable transition of port relationships

Port relationships have received continuous attention from the academic community. However, the existing studies do not provide a science map for promoting the sustainable transition of port relationships. This study combined quantitative analysis and qualitative discussion on the previous research of port relationships from 1999 to 2022. A total of 339 articles were quantitatively analyzed and visualized the knowledge body of existing studies. The main key research topics and evolution path of these 339 articles were quantitatively analyzed and qualitatively discussed for constructing a science map of port relationships. The results indicate that the aca-demic community of port relationships does not show a significant Matthew effect. Existing research on port relationships is supported by 16 classical references with higher co-citation frequency, and the knowledge foundation of port relationships is divided into three significant co-citation clusters. The main research topics of port relationships show evolutionary trends during different research periods and mainly focus on competition, cooperation, and co-opetition. Finally, three future research directions are predicted based on the science map for guiding the future research of port relationships: (1) integration mechanism and strategy of dry ports and multimodal transportation; (2) comprehensive competitiveness evaluation index system; (3) port adaptation investment assessment method and optimization strategy. This study provides a comprehensive science map for promoting the sustainable transition of e academic collaborations and management practices on port relationships.