What is it about?
Soundscape refers to the sonic environment that a living being, such as a human or an animal, encounters within a specific context. It influences the functionality of a space and shapes the perception of its quality by the being. Consequently, the soundscape plays a vital role in ecosystems around the world. Over the past few decades, scholars have investigated soundscapes through a variety of methods across multiple fields. This study seeks to offer a concise summary of the history of soundscape research, highlight significant authors, institutions, and collaborative networks, and uncover trends and primary themes through a bibliometric analysis.
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Why is it important?
Bibliometric studies and systematic literature reviews have been conducted on various facets of soundscapes, including indoor soundscapes, urban soundscapes, soundscapes in historical religious buildings, psychoacoustic indicators related to soundscapes, and the psychological and physiological impacts of soundscapes. These studies yield valuable insights that enhance our understanding of soundscape development from multiple viewpoints and illuminate potential future research avenues. However, despite these investigations and discoveries, it is still uncertain how much effort researchers have dedicated to the study of soundscape generally in recent decades. To tackle this significant research question, a timely bibliometric analysis is essential to reveal the trends and key themes of soundscape research in a comprehensive manner. This study presents a wide-ranging, inclusive overview of the progression of soundscape research over nearly forty years. In addition to pinpointing prolific authors, institutions, countries, and funding bodies, our findings provide important insights into the structure and fragmentation of the field, as well as opportunities for enhanced interdisciplinary collaboration.
Perspectives
Crafting this article has been an incredible journey, as my co-author and I endeavored to explore the chosen topic—soundscape—from the widest perspective possible. We utilized a single keyword—soundscape—to pinpoint and examine documents spanning nearly four decades. This choice was deliberate. Similar to the initial adoption of terms like sound or acoustics in academic research, soundscape today serves as a rich yet conceptually varied entry point. It finds application in a multitude of fields, including urban planning, environmental psychology, bioacoustics, landscape ecology, and the arts. The aim of the study was to create a macro-level overview of how the term has developed in practice, rather than confining it within a limited conceptual framework.
Professor W.M. To
Macao Polytechnic University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Mapping Soundscape Research: Authors, Institutions, and Collaboration Networks, Acoustics, June 2025, MDPI AG,
DOI: 10.3390/acoustics7020038.
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