With the development of wetland research, small and micro wetlands are receiving more and more attention of researchers and policy makers. However, the research of small and micro wetlands in China is still in its starting, with few literatures introducing the concept, management and construction technology. In order to understand the research status of small and micro wetlands, CiteSpace visualization and quantitative methods were used to analyze 3072 published papers on small and micro wetlands, which were collected from Web of Science Core Collection of Science Citation Index Expanded Database. The number of papers published annually, subjects’ distribution, information of core authors and core countries, keywords and citation by other papers were analyzed. The future development, research trends and hotspots of small and micro wetlands were discussed as well. The results showed that the number of published papers has increased steadily since 1990. The study of small and micro wetlands involved 137 subjects such as life sciences, environmental sciences, ecology, aquatic products science and so on, which could be classified into 16 clusters. There were overlapping among clusters of the main studies as one cluster may have inheritance and derivative relationship from another. The response and adaptation of small and micro wetlands to global change and their contribution to carbon neutralization, the purification effect of small and micro wetlands on wastewater, especially the treatment of non-point source pollution, how the ecological function of small and micro wetlands serve the rural revitalization, the research and engineering application of urban small and micro wetlands may become the growth points in this research field.