Global trends in sediment-related research in earth science during 1992–2011: a bibliometric analysis

An effective bibliometric analysis based on the Science Citation Index-Expanded database was conducted to evaluate earth science sediment-related research from different perspectives from 1992 to 2011. The geographical influences of the authors were subsequently visualized. Sediment-related research experienced notable growth in the past two decades. Multidisciplinary geosciences and environmental sciences were the two major categories, and Environmental Science and Technology was the most active journal. Damsté JSS and Schouten S were the two most prolific authors with the most high-quality articles and the greatest geographic influences. The major spatial clusters of authors overlapped quite well with regions with high economic growth in the USA, Western Europe, and Eastern Asia. The USA was the largest contributor in global sediment research with the most independent and collaborative papers, and the dominance of the USA was also confirmed in the national collaboration network. National academic output was positively associated with its economic capability. The Chinese Academy of Sciences, the US Geological Survey and the Russian Academy of Sciences were the three major contributing institutions. A keywords analysis determined that “evolution”, “water”, “soil(s)”, and “model” were consistent hotspots in sediment research. Several keywords such as “organic-matter”, “Holocene”, “dynamics”, “erosion”, “sediment transport”, “climate”, and “heavy-metal” received dramatically increased attention during the study period. Through co-word analysis, significant differences were observed between environmental and multidisciplinary geosciences in terms of the most frequently used keywords, and the prevalent research topic patterns were ascertained.