A bibliometric analysis of global forest ecology research during 2002-2011

Bibliometric is increasingly used for the analysis of discipline dynamics and management related decision-making. This study analyzes 937,923 keywords from 78,986 articles concerning forest ecology and conducts a serial analysis of these articles' characteristics. The articles' records, published between 2002 and 2011, were downloaded from the Web of Science, and their keywords were exported by Java processing programs. The result shows that forest ecology studies focused on forest diversity, conservation, dynamics and vegetation in the last decade. Developed countries, such as the USA, Canada, and Germany, were the most productive countries in the field of forest ecology research. From 2002 to 2011, the number of articles published annually related to forest ecology grew at a stable rate, as indicated by the fit produced by a high determination coefficient (R(2) = 0.9955). The findings of this study may be applicable for planning and managing forest ecology research and partners involved in such research may use this study as a reference.