Abstract Coal spontaneous combustion (CSC) is a serious problem and remains a global safety concern in coal industry. In this paper, bibliometric analysis of the worldwide scientific publications on CSC was conducted to understand the characteristics and research trends in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-Expanded) database. CiteSpace was adopted to evaluate the relationship among different countries/territories, authors, and keywords. In total, 829 documents on CSC were indexed, covering 1752 authors, 197 journals, 53 countries, and 591 institutes between 1984 and 2018. The studies related to CSC have been growing from 3 in 1984 to 126 in 2018. China, Australia, and the USA lead scientific production on CSC research, while more international collaboration should be strengthened in future. Wang DM, Qin BT, and Deng J are the most active researchers in this field. Fuel, International Journal of Coal Geology, and Energy and Fuels are the major sources of CSC publications. In addition, China holds three academic entities among the national-wide top 10 active institutions, with China University of Mining and Technology as the most productive research institutes. According to the frequency of keywords, low temperature oxidation, kinetics, mechanism, model are the dominant topics in CSC research. Similarly, there are new research hotspots appearing in recent years, related to 3 phase foam, fire extinguishment, and foam preparation.