A bibliometric analysis of desalination research during 1997-2012

Abstract

This study explores a bibliometric approach to quantitatively assessing current research trends on desalination, by using the related literature published between 1997 and 2012 in journals of all the subject categories of the Science Citation Index (SCI). The articles acquired from such literature were concentrated on the general analysis by publication type and language, characteristics of articles outputs, country, subject categories and journals, and the frequency of title-words and keywords used. Over the past 16 years, there had been a significant increase trend in publication outputs, along with more participation of countries/territories. The seven major industrialized countries (G7) published the majority of the world articles, while their article share was being replacing by other countries represented by BRIC countries. An analysis of the title-words and author keywords showed that seawater desalination and membrane technologies were the hottest topics in desalination research. In addition, forward osmosis and capacitive deionization have attracted great attention in the list since 2005. The findings of this study can help relevant researchers understand the performance of desalination research in the world, and suggest directions for further research by a bibliometric method.