The impact of agricultural chemical inputs on environment: global evidence from informetrics analysis and visualization

This paper identifies and analyzes salient research frontiers, research hotspots and high-frequency terms using aggregated and multiple-source literature records related to the topic of ‘effects of agricultural chemical inputs on the environment.’ We employ a set of Informetrics Theory methods (i.e. document co-citation analysis, document clustering and co-words analysis via co-occurrence network of subject terms) for our analysis. Our findings suggest that in the past 30 years, research about this topic can be divided into three stages, namely the early stage (1990–99), the middle stage (2000–07) and the late stage (2008–16). Research directions for the three identified stages deal primarily with (a) the effects of pesticides and veterinary drugs on the environment, (b) the influence of fertilizer application on the environment and food safety and (c) the technologies and strategies to monitor and control the impact of agricultural chemical inputs on the environment. Particularly, we find that research in the topic of interest primarily focusses on agricultural scenarios of food crop production and fish farming. In terms of agricultural chemical inputs, major attention is given to pesticides and fertilizers. With respect to the impact of agricultural inputs, pollutant formation and transferring process, nitrogen and phosphorous cycles, impact assessment indicators, as well as pollution prevention and reduction strategies are the most researched areas, and soil and water constitute the main researched environmental media. Finally, institutions and organization based in North America, East Asia and Europe are main research contributors on this topic.