Research Review and Prospect of Soil Heavy Metals Pollution——Bibliometric Analysis Based on Web of Science
Soil is one of the main resources for mankinds survival. Soil pollution, especially heavy metal pollution has become a global problem for urgent need to solve. To better understand the global trend in soil heavy metal pollution and to reflect major nations’ scientific advances and influences on the world’s scientific community in the field, a bibliometric study on soil heavy metal pollution literature indexed by the Web of Science based on Web of Knowledge during 1990～2008 was carried out using regular search methods. Results indicated that among all nations, China had the largest number of publications, accounting for 15% of all related publications worldwide. The average impact factor of the top 10 journals publishing related articles was 2.608. Three journals including Environmental Pollution, Science of the Total Environmental and Water Air and Soil Pollution were the most important and popular ones in this field. The Chinese Academy of Sciences, Zhejiang University and Hong Kong Baptist University were the top 3 institutions that had the highest numbers of publications with the highest quality in China.