Biological invasions are one of the major threats to the functioning of local ecosystems and global biodiversity, and thus have become a prime focus of scientific attention over the past several decades. To better understand the research that has been carried out, we searched the Web of Science database for publications pertaining to ecological damage caused by and risk assessments of exotic invasive species between the years 1995 and 2014. We then used Bibexcel and the Thomson Data Analyzer to examine such aspects as the annual number of publications, journal of publication, institutional affiliations, study subjects and the frequency of key words. We found that the number of publications increased annually from 1995 to 2014, reaching 511 publications in 2014; notably, there appeared to be a rapid increase from 2008 to 2014. Publications derived primarily from North America, Australia and Europe, with the USA the most dominant individual country and China ranking 5^th, and papers published by authors in the USA, Australia, France, the UK, and Germany proved to have greater impact based on the analysis of citations. The US Department of Agriculture published the most papers, with the Chinese Academy of Sciences ranking 10^th. Papers published by researchers in the fields of entomology, agronomy, plant sciences, and ecology focused primarily on topics related to biological control, risk assessment, weed control, and pest control in agricultural production, followed by biological invasion and climate change. Based on these results, it is clear that more studies should be carried out in Asia, and particularly in China. In addition, the effects of climate change on traits of invasive species, along with research on ecological control of invasive species and ecosystem restoration, should be given more attention in the future.