Through different research perspectives, the current situation of domestic and international literature publication on environmental regulation and carbon emission reduction was sorted out, and targeted improvement measures and suggestions are put forward in combination with domestic and international research trends and cutting-edge dynamics, so as to promote the enhancement and advancement of the research level of the field of environmental regulation and carbon emission reduction in China. Based on the bibliometric method, 822 English documents included in the core set of Web of Science (WoS) and 4 768 Chinese documents in the core journals of CSSCI were compared and analyzed by CiteSpace software for the theme of environmental regulation and carbon emission reduction. Domestic research on environmental regulation and carbon emission reduction started late, but the international recognition is increasing year by year. Compared with foreign studies, there are fewer domestic studies on energy consumption, FDI and performance. In terms of modeling methodology, fewer domestic studies utilize the data envelopment analysis (DEA) method. The conclusions drawn from bibliometric methods favor probability laws, which can reduce the problem of subjective selection by authors. Foreign databases have less relevant literature due to precise limitations, and the analysis is not comprehensive. The data exported from domestic CSSCI cannot be analyzed for citations and journal sources, and the breadth of analysis is limited.