Global trends and characteristics of vermicompost research over the past 24 years

This study aims to investigate a practical bibliometric analysis and discuss its trends to evaluate the global scientific production of vermicompost research from 1993 to 2017 and explain its several advantages to our environment and waste management. The data were from the database of the Science Citation Index (SCI) published by the ISI Web of Science and illustrated by Excel and VOS viewer. According to the 2174 publications, this article was conducted based on four significant aspects, including publications growth trends, countries/territories, categories and journals, and keywords co-occurrence network analysis. This study revealed remarkable positive growth trends of the research and the number of articles related to vermicompost over the last 24 years with more countries participating in this field. Although the USA has the most collaboration with other countries, developing countries such as India, which was the most productive one, made significant progress in sharing articles within the study period. Based on analyses of dominant categories, the most common subject category was Environmental Science, and the most productive journal was Bioresource Technology. Finally, we analyzed author keywords to the extracted research article emphasis. The results showed that mainstream research claim vermicomposting with the help of Eisenia fetida earthworms which converts several wastes such as sewage sludge to a soil improvement fertilizer. It is an essential approach to eliminate heavy metals from the wastes and provide essential nutrients to improve the growth and yield of plants.