The Tibetan Plateau and its surrounding areas have a unique natural environment and complex geological structure, as well as significant influences on the global environment and climate change. For these reasons, this region has received extensive attention from the international scientific community for a long time. This study analyzed published articles retrieved from the SCIE and ESI databases on Tibetan Plateau research during the period 2009-2015. Using the bibliometric method and multiple analysis tools, this study conducted a rigorous analysis of the current status and progress of Tibetan Plateau research and summarized the situation of the international Tibetan Plateau research in recent years. The main conclusions are as follows: The scale and academic influence of recent international research on the Tibetan Plateau have shown a good momentum of development. According to the research outputs, China, India,and the United States ranked as the top three countries,and countries neighboring the Tibetan Plateau, such as Pakistan and Nepal, have shown rapid developments. The overall advantage of Chinese Tibetan Plateau research institutions has gradually expanded, with increasingly higher quantity and quality of publications. Major journals publishing Tibetan Plateau research articles are in geosciences and environmental science, and highly cited articles were mainly published in major high-quality comprehensive science journals. The subjects of Tibetan Plateau research continued to become more complete and the research content showed clear regional characteristics. The research topics include the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau, the influences of the various spheres of the plateau on global climate change, and alpine ecosystem biodiversity and responses to global warming. In the future, Tibetan Plateau research in China should focus on cutting- edge scientific issues, promote the cross fertilization and integration of multiple disciplines, promote collaborative integrated and independent innovation capability of scientific research, produce major scientific achievements with international influence, and provide scientific and technological supports for the "Belt and Road" initiative implementation and the healthy development of regional ecological environment.