Abstract: To get further information and clarify the global research status and hotspots of soil fauna, the literatures of SCI on soil fauna during 1986—2016 were studied with bibliometric analysis based on Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) database from Web of Science. The research priorities and development trend were discussed. Results showed that the number of publications on soil fauna increased year by year. The quantity of published articles from the United States was the maximum among all the countries, those from China ranked the second. In terms of the number of publications, Chinese Academy of Sciences and USDA ARS were the top two of research institutions.“Soil Biology Biochemistry”,“Plos One”and“Applied Soil Ecology”were the leading journals on soil fauna. Biodiversity, nitrogen addition, heavy metal pollution and ecological degradation were the research focus of soil fauna.