Abstract
The analysis of research trends is used to identify key subject areas, research trends over time, and new discussions in a study field. The purpose of this study is to examine the characteristics of research articles published in the area of rural planning using bibliometric methods. Research articles published in the Journal of Korean Society of Rural Planning "Rural Planning" from 1995 to 2014 were analyzed to determine the annual publications, the number of periodical contributions, the authorship patterns, and popular research subjects and keywords. The results of this study are as follows; (1) The number of research papers and authors has increased over the 20 years periods (1995-2014); (2) The most published authors are associated with the study of rural planning. Seoul National University, Rural Development Administration, and Chonnam National University have highly contributed to the paper publications; (3) The most frequent word in titles is "Rural" for the whole period from 1995 to 2014. The most frequent words are "Village" and "Planning" from 1995-2006, and "Landscape" and "Village" in 2007-2010, and "Village" and "Area" from 2011-2014; and (4) The most used keywords are "Rural amenity", "Rural village", and "Rural landscape" for all of the different time frames.