Scientometric analysis of research progress on water pollution during 2012-2021

Abstract

This paper examines the scientometric analysis of 44172 global publications trends on water pollution using web of science database during the period 2012-2021. The average number of publications published per year was 4417.2. The highest number of publications (8079) was published in the year 2021. The relative growth rates (RGR) has decreased from 2013 (0.74) to 2021 (0.22) in the span of 10 years. The doubling time (DT) has gradually increased from 0.94 in 2013 to 3.15 in 2018. The exponential growth of publications was observed during the study period. Majority of publications were found in English language. The results showed that China is the major country that conducts research on water pollution and India stood 3rank in terms of productivity in this period. A total of 23,519 different institutions were involved in publication of articles. Chinese Academic of Sciences, China topped the list with 3013 (6.82%) publications followed by University of Chinese Academic of Sciences, China with 1116 (2.53%) publications. The scientific literature on water pollution is spread over 2728 different web of science source journals. Environmental sciences ecology has highest number of articles with 24562 (55.60%) among subjects.