[Objective] Soil organic carbon mineralization is an important process of terrestrial carbon pool turnover, and its subtle changes will cause drastic fluctuations in the global carbon pool. This study aims to highlight the current status and development trend of international soil organic carbon mineralization research and to provide theoretical groundwork for the dynamic changes of global carbon pools.[Method] A total of 1 045 publications related to soil organic carbon mineralization; published from 1982 to 2020, were obtained from the Science Citation Index-Expanded database (SCIE). Then the Cite Space, VOS viewer, and GIS were used to sort out and visualize high-productive countries, research institutions, and researchers based on indicators such as the number of papers, total citation, average citation of articles, and total link strength.[Result] The number of papers related to soil organic carbon mineralization have been increasing since 1982; especially between 1993 to 2019, and there is potential for continuous growth. As evident, research on soil organic carbon mineralization was very popular in the US with the largest number of publications and very high Betweenness Centrality. The annual average publications on soil organic carbon mineralization in China were higher than those of the US after 2016. However, the average cited times were very low due to the lack of innovation. Therefore, there is a call to strengthen the innovation and international influence of scientific research in this field. The Chinese Academy of Sciences had the largest number of literatures for all research institutions. However, both France and Germany demonstrated the highest Betweenness Centrality, which means that they commanded the greatest influence in the world. The research on soil organic carbon mineralization was carried out based on the integration of knowledge between different disciplines and fields. It was observed that most of the existing studies focused on (i) the effect of soil types, environmental factors, and land use types on the amount and temporal and spatial distribution characteristics of soil organic carbon mineralization, and (ii) the global carbon mineralization and turnover.[Conclusion] Despite the growing trend in the literature, more studies that explore the internal mechanism and model of soil organic carbon mineralization under different environmental factors and land use conditions are needed. These studies should provide accurate parameters and ways for global carbon storage, turnover, and cycle models. Meanwhile, it is also necessary to initiate more studies related to priming effects, soil erosion, and exogenous carbon/nitrogen additions.