A bibliometric analysis of eutrophication literatures: an expanding and shifting focus

This paper examined the eutrophication literatures from 1998 to 2015 using bibliometric techniques basing on the database of Science Citation Index. Bibliometric techniques, social network analysis, and mapping knowledge domains in this paper were used. The results revealed that article was the most used document type accounting for 94.79% (14,006) of the records. With the rapid development of eutrophication domain after 2004, the annual article publishing amount also grew notably in each country, with the list of US tops. International cooperation was not enough to compare with that between institutions. An author keyword analysis showed that "phosphorus," "nutrients," "nitrogen," "water quality," "phytoplankton," and "sediment" were the most popular keywords. And it was also found that climate change, life cycle assessment, and chlorophyll a appear with high frequency in recent years, indicating that the eutrophication mechanism analysis might turn from uni-factor microresearch to multi-factor macroresearch, and the eutrophication management research tends to be whole-process management research. In addition, the future focuses of research directions, including (1) eutrophication and its ecosystem response, (2) eutrophication management, (3) eutrophication and climate change interactions, (4) eutrophication monitoring and forecast, and (5) ecological restoration of eutrophication. These findings are useful for the future endeavor of eutrophication academic research.