# Smart Textiles: A Review and Bibliometric Mapping
## 4 Conclusions  
For historical reasons and due to the rapid development in this field, the terminology and definitions for smart textiles have only recently been harmonised and standardised. According to ISO/TR 23383, smart textiles must reversibly interact with their environment and respond or adapt to changes in the environment. Therefore, the term smart textiles has been distinguished and separated from the term functional textiles, in which the functionality exceeds the normal textile function but is pre-defined. In the early stages of development, the terms were used rather inconsistently, which is also reflected in the literature. In accordance with the research questions and the results of the analyses, the following conclusions are drawn. _RQ1: What are the global research outputs and publication trends?_  
According to the Scopus database search, a total of 5810 documents on smart textiles were published in 1739 different journals and conference proceedings from 1989 to 2022, with an average growth rate of 22%. There has been exponential growth in the last 10 years, and most of the papers have been published in the last few years. The field of smart textiles is highly interdisciplinary, with engineering, materials science, computer science, chemistry, and physics being the top five disciplines out of more than twenty subject areas. Based on the number of publications in the Scopus database, shape change, capacitive, and piezoelectric smart textiles are the three fastest-growing groups, followed by chromic, photovoltaic, phase change, and thermoelectric types of smart textiles. _RQ2: What are the most relevant/influential documents, authors, sources, and countries in the field of smart textiles?_  
The ten most cited documents in the field of smart textiles deal with 4D biomimetic printing and shape memory polymers, wearable sensors and other wearable electronic systems, energy-harvesting textiles, and PCMs. The two most prolific authors in the field of smart textiles, [PERSON], [PERSON], and [PERSON], [PERSON], are from the University of Southampton, UK. Their research interests include electronic textiles, textile wearables, nanotechnologies for energy harvesting, and biomedical applications. The author with the highest number of citations (6556) is [PERSON], [PERSON] from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. His recent publications in the field of smart textiles are related to energy harvesting, including triboelectric nanogenerators, self-charging textile systems, physiological and motion sensors, and EMI shielding. In terms of the number of documents, the leading journals are _Sensors_, _ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces_, and _Textile Research Journal_, which are also on the list of most cited sources, while _Advanced Materials_ has the highest number of citations. Conferences provide high-quality new information on research developments in a short period of time; among the ten most productive sources in the field of smart textiles research are five conference proceedings. In absolute numbers, China is the country with the most publications on smart textiles, followed by the USA, South Korea, the UK, and Germany. _RQ3: What have been the main research topics, and what might be the focal points for future research?_  
Co-word analysis of the authors' keywords reveals five thematic clusters that highlight the following research areas in smart textiles:  
* Smart textile materials, technologies, applications, and their properties (smart textiles cluster);
* Electronic textiles, their components, such as sensors and conductive yarns, their design, and their integration into computer networks (E-textiles cluster);
* Smart fabrics for clothing, their special technologies and materials, design and properties of the products (smart fabrics cluster);
* Research at the interface between wearable electronic devices and smart textiles (wearables cluster);
* Electronic devices integrated into textiles to be worn on the body (wearable technologies cluster).