Changes in authorship, networks, and research topics in ecosystem services

Abstract

A large network of researchers and practitioners have been working on ecosystem services (ES) for decades. In the inaugural issue of this journal, in 2012, we analysed the authorship structure, citations, topics, and journals publishing on ES. Here we update and expand that analysis and compare results with those we found in our previous analysis. We also analyse the influence that the journal Ecosystem Services has had on these variables over its first 10 years. We look at which articles have had the most influence on the field (as measured by the number of citations in Ecosystem Services) and on the broader scientific literature (as measured by total citations). We also look at how authorship networks, topics through keywords, and the types of journals publishing on the topic have changed. Results show that between the two time periods (before and after the establishment of the journal Ecosystem Services in 2012) there has been significant growth in the number of authors (12,795 to 91,051) and number of articles published (4,948 to 33,973) on ES. Authorship networks have also expanded significantly, and the patterns of co-authorship have evolved in interesting ways. The journal Ecosystem Services is now the most prolific publisher of articles on ES among the 4,286 journals that have published in the area. There is a cluster of 9 top journals that cite, and are cited by each other, within this rapidly expanding policy-relevant research area.