The Knowledge Structure and Research Hotspots of West Economic Geography:Visualized Quantitative Research Based on CiteSpace
利用Web of Science数据库和CiteSpace工具，客观分析了西方经济地理学的知识基础、历史趋势和近期研究热点，发现其研究主题集中、分支学科未强，当前热点指向创新、知识、增长、网络、城市和产业。
West economic geography(WEG) is now in a period of thought evolution and growth spurt, the research outline framework has attracted much attention. Shifted from subjective judgment to objective measurement, the paper is a new attempt to study WEG's outline framework. Taking advantage of theWeb of Sciencedatabase to collocate journal article and its reference, the paper focus on WEG's knowledge base, historical development trends and recent research hot spot based on the platform of CiteSpace. We found that:1) WEG has concentrated research topics and does not formed a powerful branch disciplines in nearly a decade; 2) Around the 1990s disciplinary research entered into an active phase, outstanding literature emerged and authors' academic background transited from the economic field to geography; 3) clustering trends suggest thatSpatial Agglomeration Economies,Multidimensional Shift,Global Economy,Cluster- Networkare relatively vibrant and occupying the prominent position, but Reshaping Economic Geography and Financial Geography these two branches of study are likely to keep silence; 4) Research hotspots at present WEG point to keywordsinnovation,knowledge,growth,networks,citiesandindustry.