Global Trends of Compost Research from 1997 to 2012: A Bibliometric Analysis Based on SCI Database

摘要

An effective bibliometric analysis was used in this study to evaluate the global scientific production of compost research during the period of 1997-2012. The data were from the database of the SCI published by the ISI Web of Science, Philadelphia, PA, USA. The articles related to compost were analyzed from the aspects including publication type and language, characteristics of articles outputs, countries, subject categories and journals and the distribution of title-words, author keywords and keyword plus used. The number of articles related to compost increased rapidly over the last 16 years with more countries participating in compost research. The developed countries attained a dominant position in the compost research while the developing countries made great progress in the share of articles in the study period. From the analysis of the title-words, author keywords and keywords plus, it can be concluded that "manure" and "sewage sludge" attracted plenty of attention in the compost research and "soil" and "heavy-metals" were the hot spots in recent years. The research focus was turning to the objects of compost application from the compost technology itself.