Abstract
The exploitation of geothermal energy plays an important role in meeting human energy demand and reducing greenhouse gas emission. Firstly, using HistCite scientific metrology visualization software and using WoS (Web of Science) database as literature source, the published years and citation time series of the literature on geothermal energy research was analyzed, which shows that the global geothermal energy research has been very active in recent 20 years, it is a high-yield period for the important literature in this field. Starting from the early basic theory of geothermal energy, it has evolved into two relatively obvious research areas: direct utilization of geothermal energy and geothermal power generation, since then it has continued to evolve into a number of sub-domains that blend with each other and have different themes.