Analysis of Global Research Trends on BIM Studies in the Field of Architecture

This paper reveals the results of a bibliometric analysis on BIM and architecture to analyze and determine how the current research trends in BIM literature have evolved and diversified in the discipline of architecture. Although there are currently bibliometric analysis reviews of BIM in the literature, these studies take either the BIM process from a general perspective or the engineering-construction sectors, urban design scale. This state-of-the-art study explains a bibliometric analysis of the literature's relationship between architecture and BIM. Through analyzing the data including keywords, authors, journals, institutions, citation rate etc., the relationship between BIM and architecture in all times till today has been mapped and visualized by using Clarivate Analytics' Web of Science database and VOS viewer program. In addition, analyzing the current literature published between 2017-2022 was highlighted and the emerging fields in architectural research were revealed. Emerging fields today in architectural research under the scope of BIM have clustered according to the keywords and these keywords are mostly related to information technologies and automation. The goal of revealing these findings extensively is to inspire future research based on the gaps and missing information in the existing literature. The unique importance of this study is to generate a knowledge base for the relationship between BIM and architecture studies based on the data including keywords, authors, journals, universities, citation rate, etc., adopting the bibliometric approach. This study provides valuable information to BIM studies in architecture research for researchers and practitioners. The current state of the research field, trend topics, and the key scholars and universities were identified.