The literature on spatial closures is complicated by the terms in use, including closures, reserves, marine protected areas, harvest refuge, and spatial management and usage has varied over time and among different groups of investigators.
The word reserves, with fish and coral reefs captures the largest number of papers, with 200 articles published since the first published paper in 1996 and this literature has been cited 6381 times, has an h index of 45, and 17 of these papers have been cited over 100 times. If fish is removed from the search, the number of articles increases to 352. The year with the most number of citations was 1006 in 2009 but the most number of published papers was 23 in 2006. There are more than 100 authors with more than 2 publications in this field and consequently, this is the most attractive and best studied of the various fisheries management restrictions.