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Scientometric analysis of phosphorus research in eutrophic lakes

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Abstract

Eutrophication has become a top environmental issue for most lake ecosystems in the world and enhanced phosphorus (P) input is usually considered the primary stressor. Focused on the role of phosphorus in eutrophic lakes, a bibliometric approach was applied to quantitatively evaluate the main interests of research and trends in this area. Using data from the Science Citation Index Expanded database between 1900 and 2013, a total of 3,875 publications was returned by searching topic keywords. Spatial, temporal, and interactive characteristics of the articles, countries, and keywords are presented using time series, frequency, and co-occurrence analysis. Result shows that the annual publications on P in eutrophic lakes keep an exponential growth (R 2 = 0.93; p < 0.0001) over the last two decades, reflecting an increasing attraction in this area. However, publications of phosphorus research make up only 40 % of total records in eutrophic lakes, indicating that there are other significant topics in eutrophication problems of lakes. The USA is the largest output country in this area, contributing 23 % of the total articles, followed by China with a proportion of 15 %. However. China has replaced the USA as the largest output country in the world since 2011, but its citation per paper is significantly lower than the USA, indicating its’ favor on quantity over quality. Based on international cooperation analysis, five regional groups were found, and the USA, the UK, P.R. China, Sweden, and German are the centers of their groups. The top 20 title keywords, author keywords and keywords plus were identified according to their frequency to assist our understanding of interests of research and modes. Surprisingly, nitrogen is a high co-occurrence keyword in this study, and its share of publications with P research in eutrophic lakes is increasing rapidly. Furthermore, the high correlation between P and N research in spatial distribution also indicates the increasing significance of N research in eutrophic lakes.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to express their gratitude to the China Scholarship Council for funding the visiting venture that generated this paper. This research is also funded by the Major Science and Technology Program for Water Pollution Control and Treatment of China (2013ZX07102) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41222002).

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  1. Department of Environmental Sciences, Key Laboratory of Water and Sediment Sciences, Ministry of Education, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, People’s Republic of China

    Wei Gao, Yan Chen, Yong Liu & Huai-cheng Guo

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  1. Wei Gao
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  2. Yan Chen
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  3. Yong Liu
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  4. Huai-cheng Guo
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Correspondence to Huai-cheng Guo.

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Gao, W., Chen, Y., Liu, Y. et al. Scientometric analysis of phosphorus research in eutrophic lakes. Scientometrics 102, 1951–1964 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-014-1500-7

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