Bibliometrics of Water Research: a Global Snapshot

UNU-INWEH REPORT SERIES 06

Bibliometrics of Water Research: A Global Snapshot

Hamid Mehmood

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UNU-INWEH is an integral part of the United Nations University (UNU) – an academic arm of the UN, which includes 13 institutes and programmes located in 12 countries around the world, and dealing with various issues of development. UNU-INWEH was established, as a public service agency and a subsidiary body of the UNU, in 1996. Its operations are secured through long-term host-country and core-funding agreements with the Government of Canada. The Institute is located in Hamilton, Canada, and its facilities are supported by McMaster University.

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UNU-INWEH Reports normally address global water issues, gaps and challenges, and range from original research on specific subject to synthesis or critical review and analysis of a problem of global nature and significance. Reports are published by UNU-INWEH staff, in collaboration with partners, as / when applicable. Each report is internally and externally peer-reviewed. UNU-INWEH Reports are an open access publication series, available from the Institute’s web site and in hard copies.

About the Author

Hamid Mehmood is a Senior Researcher (Hydro-informatics and Information Technology) at UNU-INWEH, Hamilton, ON, Canada.

Suggested Citation: Mehmood, H. 2019. Bibliometrics of Water Research: A Global Snapshot. UNU-INWEH Report Series, Issue 06. United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, Hamilton, Canada. Cover image: Shutterstock.com Design: Kelsey Anderson (UNU-INWEH)

Download at: http://inweh.unu.edu/publications/ ISBN: 978-92-808-6096-2

UNU-INWEH is supported by the Government of Canada through Global Affairs Canada. UNU-INWEH Report Series Issue 06

Bibliometrics of Water Research: A Global Snapshot

Hamid Mehmood

CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 5

INTRODUCTION 6

DATA AND METHODS 7

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 8 Publication and citation trends during 2012-20 8 Water Research per Capita 10 Water Research Percentage 10 Water Knowledge Flows during 2012-2017 11

CONCLUSIONS 15

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 17

REFERENCES 18

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report examines the various dimensions of global water-related research over the 2012-2017 period, using extensive bibliographic data. The review covers trends in water-related publications and citations, the relative importance of water-related research in the overall body of scientific research, flows of water-related knowledge between countries and the dynamics of water research publishing opportunities.

In summary, it shows that: less than 50% of all countries are publishing water-related research, that China and USA are the two top publishers, and that China’s publishing rate has been growing steadily over the study period. More than 70% of water-related publications originating in USA are being cited globally, while China’s water research output appears to be primarily internally cited at present. Analysis of the global water knowledge flows suggests that research is hardly addressing a range of regional water challenges. Countries with protracted water problems – for example in infrastructure, environment, agriculture, energy solutions – do not seem to be at the forefront of water research production or knowledge transfer. Instead, global water research is reliant on Western, particularly US-produced, scientific outputs.

A disconnect is also observed between the percentage increase in the publication and the number of citations, suggesting low quality or a narrow focus of many publications. Among other factors, this may reflect the pressure on researchers to contribute a certain number of publications per year, or of the progressively increasing role of grey literature in scientific discourse that ‘diverts’ some citation flow.

Analysis of the number of research publications per million people suggests that water research does not necessarily emerge as a reaction to water scarcity in a specific country, but may be driven by the traditional economic value of water supply, geopolitical location, a focus on regional development - including cross-border water management - or development aid spending, or globally applicable research in water management. The proportion of water research in the overall research output of a country is small, including for some of the top-publishing countries.

The number of water-related journals that create opportunities for publishing water research, has grown dramatically in absolute terms since 2000, and is now close 2100 journals.

The metrics used in this report are based on readily available bibliographic data. They can be further focused to better understand a specific thematic domain, geographical region or country, or to analyze a different period. To help accelerate solutions to global and national water challenges that many of these research papers are highlighting, the water research community needs to look beyond the research ‘box’ and identify ways to measure development impact of water research programmes, rather ‘impact’ based solely on academic impact measured in citations. The research findings, learning and knowledge in these research publications needs to be conveyed in a practical way to the real users of this knowledge – stakeholders who are beyond research circles. The interactive graphs from the report can be accessed at: http://bit.ly/2W5l3Gr

Keywords: Sustainable Development Goals, water research, bibliometrics, citations, knowledge flows

Bibliometrics of Water Research: A Global Snapshot 5 INTRODUCTION Many water challenges mentioned above are not new, and while significant effort went into resolving them - Water is at the heart of the current global sustainability including research effort - not many of them have been effort – implementation of ‘Agenda 2030’ (https:// removed from the global development agenda. The sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/ status of any specific needs for water research in many transformingourworld). One of its sustainable countries are not always known, although there is, of development goals (SDGs) – SDG6 - is dedicated course, a general understanding in the global water entirely to water. SDG6 addresses not only the big research community of the strengths of various water challenges of universal access to water and sanitation research schools. The expenditure on water research but also the issues of resource management, efficiency, in countries and flows of water research knowledge and freshwater ecosystems. The water issue is strongly between them are not obvious. There is scope for better represented in many other SDGs and individual SDG coordination of investments by various international targets (UN-Water Task Force, 2016). Water is also an donors into various water research domains. There is integral part of other recent global agreements such also the need for an increasing share of ‘demand-driven’ as the 2015-2030 Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk research effort, as the utility of water research outputs Reduction (United Nations, 2015a), and the 2015 Paris to water policy and practice is often blurred. There are Agreement on Climate Change (United Nations, 2015b). many more questions that may be asked, and need at On a yearly basis, the World Economic Forum keeps least some (ideally quantitative) answers, if the water ranking ‘water crises’, and other water-related risks such research contribution to global sustainable development as ‘natural disasters’, ‘biodiversity loss and ecosystem processes in the coming years is to be clearly quantified. collapse’ ‘extreme weather events’ and ‘failure of climate change mitigation and adaption’ - among the top 10 Each of these questions may need a separately-focused global risks in terms of both impact and probability analysis, but it does not necessarily need to be lengthy (World Economic Forum, 2019). It appears, taking all of and expensive. It should evaluate the global baseline the above into consideration, that water now receives the to show where we currently are with water research – in visibility and attention it deserves in global sustainable terms of several complementary and simple measures. development processes. Its purpose is to monitor the progress of how water research helps or can help development. This report To ensure progress towards achieving water-related does not intend to answer all these questions. It aims aspirations, it is critical to mobilise financial and human to raise them to stimulate discussion in the global water resources, catalyse partnerships and international research and water education communities to spark cooperation and build water-related capacity at all levels discussion on how to the sector can redesign itself to (e.g., High-Level Panel on Water 2018). At the same time, better serve sustainable development. water research, and overall innovation in water science and technology are expected to underpin and accelerate The specific objectives and focus of the report are to this progress in the coming years. This is clearly reflected develop a quantitative narrative of the current state of in the Plan of the new UN Decade of Action (2018-2028) and trends in global water-research landscape using with the theme of ‘Water for Sustainable Development’ measurable indicators and tools that are based on existing (United Nations, 2018). At least two of its four work open bibliographic data repositories. Bibliographic streams: “Facilitating access to water-related knowledge data have been used before to analyse the research and the exchange of good practices” and “Improving dynamics of various water-related research areas such as knowledge generation including new information integrated water assessment (Zare et al., 2017), drinking for water-related SDGs” strongly emphasise the role water (Fu et al., 2013), river water quality assessment of water research in their broadly defined groups of (Wang et al., 2016), non-point source pollution (Xiang activities. Those include, amongst others “improved et al., 2017) and inter-basin water transfers (Zhang et al., international scientific cooperation in …water research, 2015). The bibliographic data have also been used to resources management, education and capacity- study the water-related research geographically such as building through enhanced access to knowledge”, the research of water use in Spain (Montoya et al., 2016), “…coordinated policy support, capacity building drinking water research in Africa (Wambu and Ho, 2016), and improved access to reliable water data…” and water quality research in India (Nishy and Saroja, 2018) conducting “water research projects aiming to advance and water research and collaboration in Southern Africa sustainable development”(United Nations, 2018). (Pouris, 2018).

In this context, it becomes justified to look closer at the The report examines the dynamics in water research global water research sector itself and examine what publications and citations globally, quantifies individual capacity and achievements to date it has had and how countries’ standing in water research, evaluates water best it can contribute to global sustainability processes. knowledge flows between countries, and related

6 Bibliometrics of Water Research: A Global Snapshot measures. The approaches suggested can be replicated institutional and 12 million author profiles and provides at the regional, country, institutional and thematic level. interfaces for various queries.

The report targets i) water researchers in the broad water The water-related bibliographic data were extracted sector who seek to better understand the possible impact from Scopus for the most recent six-year period of their outputs. ii) water educators at various levels for available- from 2012-2017. Scopus covers non-English better alignment of their water education programmes language journals only if they include English article with the most recent water research achievements; and titles and abstracts. with practical needs. iii) donors interested in tracking the policy and practice impacts of their investments The approach followed was a seven step one: in water research. iv) environmental journalists following the trends in the global water sector; and 1. An initial set of keywords – seed keyword set - was other related groups of stakeholders. generated by UNU-INWEH experts, resulting in some 170 keywords. 2. This seed set was used to query title, author defined DATA AND METHODS keywords, and abstract on Scopus. 3. The output of the initial query was used to enrich The progress of any field of science can be examined the seed keyword dataset. This was done by parsing through the quantitative analysis of related scientific for water-related terms in titles, abstract and author literature (Nederhof 2005). The number of publications defined keywords extracted by the initial query. and citations are the two primary indicators reflecting These additional terms were added to the seed scientific effort and impact. Scientific impact is keyword set. understood in this report as the impact of one’s research 4. Step two and three were repeated until a stable set on the research of others in the same or similar areas. of keywords was generated, when no additional This is not a ‘development’ impact that brings positive keywords were identified at the next iterations of changes to human lives, economy or environment. step two and three. Analyses done using these types of indicators are 5. These stable set of keywords were then shared with known as ‘scientometrics’, ‘bibliometrics’, or ‘science experts to exclude irrelevant keywords. of science policy’ (Hood and Wilson, 2001). These 6. A final list of keywords were generated; this list analyses involve searching existing bibliographic consisted of 1057 keywords. databases using a set of specific thematic keywords. 7. The final list of keywords was used to create the This approach has been used before, but, as a rule, with keyword string to query the database. Keywords a limited scope of geographical range, duration and having additional meanings in other fields were indicators (e.g., Hassan et al., 2012; Elsevier Research ANDed with ‘water’ to restrict their meaning to a Intelligence 2015; SIWI 2012). water-related field only. The keyword string can be accessed at http://bit.ly/2W5l3Gr. In an interdisciplinary area such as water research, scientific literature can be queried using two approaches. This list of keywords is designed to cover as many water- The first is where queries are executed for simple terms related themes and research areas as possible. A subset like ‘water’, ‘water security’, ‘water management’ or of this list of keywords can, naturally, be generated for similar terms, where each query returns a different future studies focusing on specific water-related themes, number of publications or citations. The disadvantage research areas, countries or time period. The results from of this approach is that multiple queries need to be the above queries were then used to i) examine general executed, that results may overlap, and that many trends and distributions of the collected publication and gaps in results are still likely. The alternative approach, citation data, and ii) calculate several related indicators, used in this study, is to assemble a comprehensive summarised below. collection of terms representing the field of water and its subareas – into one string of terms – which will Citation Impact (CI) is the ratio of the number of citations return one comprehensive result. to the number of publications. CI may be seen as a measure of research impact: the higher the CI, the more The query was performed (in 2018) on the Scopus cited (and hence more influential) the research is. database (www.scopus.com) - the largest international abstract and citation collection of peer-reviewed Water Research per Capita (per million people - WRC) is scientific literature. Scopus currently indexes 22,800 a ratio of the total water-related publications in a country titles (journals, magazines, reports) from more than 5,000 to the country’s population in millions. This indicator international publishers covering a period of 1997 till was calculated only for the most recent year – 2017 - present. Scopus includes 69 million items, with 70,000 as neither publication nor population numbers change

Bibliometrics of Water Research: A Global Snapshot 7 significantly from year to year. WRC may be seen as a development’, and ‘waste management and disposal’ proxy measure of resources dedicated to water research. subject categories. Multiple categories were selected because of the multidisciplinary nature of water-related Water Research Percentage (WRP) is a percentage of research. The category ‘water science and technology’ is the total number of water-related papers published by clearly water-centric, but it alone does not accommodate all a country in comparison to the total number of papers water-related publications identified. published by a country in ALL research subject areas. This indicator was calculated annually per country. It may be seen as a measure of relative importance of RESULTS AND DISCUSSION the water-related research in a country, compared to all other research themes. The keywords’ string queries were executed for each year of the six-year period under review (2012-2017), for 195 Knowledge Flow is an indicator that uses citations to countries. Two variables were recorded from the output of measure the flow of knowledge between two countries: these queries, i.e., the number of documents published, Source and Recipient (Hassan and Haddawy, 2013). A and the number of citations received by each country. The Source country is the one mentioned by the primary total numbers of water-related documents and citations author of the paper in the affiliation information. A recorded over the entire period were 1.2 million and recipient country is the one mentioned in the affiliation 1.5 million respectively. Only 88 countries were found to information by the primary author citing this paper. be publishing actively in thefield of water (a country was categorised as an ‘active publisher’ if it had more than one There are multiple entries for each pair of countries, water-related publication or citation in a year). which are then aggregated into a single pair. This single pair is the number of citations exchanged between Publication and citation trends during 2012-2017 the pair. To develop the knowledge flow map, 1000 of the most cited papers were selected from 2012-2017. Figures 1 and 2 show the top 20 countries in the world The knowledge flows were represented before using by the total number of publications and citations static maps (Hassan and Haddawy, 2013) or graphs (Hai respectively, over the period 2012-2017, stacked by year. Zhuge, 2006). The knowledge flow maps are presented China and the USA are visibly ahead of all other countries as cord diagrams. A chord diagram is a graphical by both parameters, and the situation does not change method of displaying the inter-relationships between significantly from year to year. data in a matrix (Alonso, 2011). The data are arranged radially around a circle with the relationships between Globally in 2017, over 224000 water-related research papers the data points typically drawn as arcs connecting the were published. China had a major share of this (19%) data. The thickness of the arc shows the magnitude followed by the USA (14%) and India (5%). of the knowledge flow - inward and outward - from a source to a recipient country. In 2017, China published 42% more papers than at the beginning of the period in 2012; and China’s publishing In addition to the bibliometric approach above, the rate has been steadily growing by at least 5-7% a year since study also assessed the size of the global water-related 2012. The USA increased its water-related publications in publishing ‘market’ – using the number of reputable 2017 by 5% compared to 2012. peer-reviewed water journals as an indicator. Data on water research-related journals were obtained from Neither China nor the USA have the highest publication the SCImago Journal & Country Rank available at percentage growth over the period. For example, seven www.scimagojr.com, which is a publicly available (7) countries – Indonesia, Iraq, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Vietnam, portal that includes the journals and country-specific Russia and Morocco have percentage growth rate between indicators developed from the information contained 100% and 370%, and there are more countries with publication in the Scopus database. Journals at this portal are numbers’ growth rates between 50 and 100% (2017 to 2012). grouped by subject area (27 major thematic areas), At the same time, the absolute numbers of research outputs subject category (313 specific subject categories), or produced by countries with high publication percentage by country. Citations’ data is drawn from over 34,100 growth are, as a rule, orders of magnitude less that those titles from more than 5,000 international publishers by the countries shown on Figure 1. There appears to be and country performance metrics from 239 countries no clear relation between the publications’ percentage worldwide. For the current study, data were collected growth, on the one hand, and the absolute publication from 2017 for the ‘water science and technology’, numbers, or gross domestic expenditure on research and ‘computers in earth sciences’, ‘earth-surface processes’, development as a percentage of national GDP. Increases ‘environmental chemistry’, ‘environmental engineering’, in water-related publications in countries may be driven by ‘environmental science’, ‘geography planning and specific national processes and policies, such as Master Plan

8 Bibliometrics of Water Research: A Global Snapshot of National Research 2017-2045 and National System of For most countries, the percentage increase in the Science and Technology in Indonesia (Indonesia Ministry publication does not translate into an increase in the of National Development Planning, 2011), Vision 2025, in number of citations (Figure 2). In fact, the trend is just Iran, which aims to ensure that 50% of academic research the opposite: there is a consistent decline, from year to is oriented towards socioeconomic needs (UNESCO, year, in the number of citations. This could be explained 2017), or Vision 2030 in Saudi Arabia, which, as part of by several factors, including i) a short period of analysis- research and development activities, has a major focus six years - which may not be sufficient to ensure the on the optimal use of water resources through utilizing required build-up of citation numbers with time – for treated and renewable water (Council of Economic and most recent outputs; ii) low quality of publications, Development Affairs, 2016). associated with government-sponsored policies on

Figure 1: The top 20 countries by the number of water-related publications during the period 2012-2017. The graph showing all 88 countries is available at: http://bit.ly/2W5l3Gr.

Figure 2: The top 20 countries by the number of water-related citations during the period 2012-2017. The graph showing all countries is available at http://bit.ly/2W5l3Gr.

Bibliometrics of Water Research: A Global Snapshot 9 publication incentives or requirements for academic staff values in 2017. The WRC indicator may be seen as the to contribute a certain number of publications per year one that allows a taxpayer contribution to water research to maintain their academic positions - the proverbial in each country assessed. In 2017, twelve countries ‘publish or perish’ paradigm; iii) the progressively released more than 150 water-related publications per increasing role of grey literature in scientific discourse, year per 1 million citizens. The very top countries - that may divert some citation flow, including publications Norway, Denmark, Australia, Sweden, Singapore - have by international bodies, governments, and NGOs. small populations, but appear to be very productive in water research publishing. The top 15 countries are China leads the number of publications in water almost all European, except Australia (with a WRC of research globally (Figure 1) This is also reflective of the 249), Singapore (207), New Zealand (191) and Canada overall trend where China has the highest number of (168). It appears that water research does not necessarily all scientific publications globally (Tollefson, 2018). It emerge as a reaction to water scarcity in a country itself, remains to be seen whether the 2017 scandal with fake but may be incentivised by the traditional economic peer-reviewed articles could have damaged China’s value of water supplies, geopolitical location, focus

Table 1: Citation impact of the top 5 countries over the period 2012-2017

Country CI 2012 CI 2013 CI 2014 CI 2015 CI 2016 CI 2017 China 26 22 23 19 11 6 USA 28 33 24 19 12 5 United Kingdom 23 18 15 12 7 3

Germany 20 21 14 11 6 3 India 12 10 8 6 4 2 Global 22 19 15 12 7 3

reputation as a scientific contributor, and whether it will on regional development - including cross-border have an impact on water research (Normile, 2017). In water management - or development aid spending, or 2017, an investigation by China’s Ministry of Science and globally applicable research in water management. High Technology into over 100 papers on the medical subject WRC may be a reflection of the historical concentration showed that the peer-review process was compromised, of research in the water sector due to either the and submitted reviews were either fabricated by the importance of water to a country economy, or to the researchers themselves or written by special agencies country’s engagement in water development aid in other hired by the researchers. countries - or both. A country-specific analysis could provide additional explanation of high WRC values, but Citation Impact (CI) of the top five countries over the is beyond the scope of this Report. past five years (Table 1) suggests that while the USA has been consistently behind China in publication numbers Water Research Percentage (Figure 1), it had the highest CI up until 2017 when China took the lead. The global CI in 2017 stands at three (total A country’s Water Research Percentage (WRP) may number of citations 728,703 divided by the total number be reflective of the relative priority of water research of publications 224,053), which leaves only China and compared to other fields of scientific research. WRP USA with CI above the global average. The reasons for may be affected by several contributing parameters, the decline of the CI with time are the same as for the including the availability of funding - both government decline in citations themselves - as described above. and multilateral international, policy focus e.g., water More insights into these reasons may be possible if as part of climate funding, practical need e.g., research the period of analysis is longer, but this is beyond the for large hydro infrastructure projects, or sociopolitical scope of this study. Overall, citations in the top 20 citing context that affect the structure of national research countries shown in Figure 2 have, as a rule, dropped priorities. over the six-year period by 50-90% (2017 to 2012). Countries shown on Figure 4 are ranked in the Water Research per Capita descending order of their average WRP over the six- year period. Overall, WRP is low for all countries - mostly Figure 3 shows the top 50 countries with the largest under 10% - and even lower for top publishing countries Water Research per Capita (per million people -WRC) (8% and lower) such as China, India, Canada (Figure 4)

10 Bibliometrics of Water Research: A Global Snapshot Figure 3: Top 50 Countries by WRC (per million people) in 2017. The graph showing all 88 countries is available http:// bit.ly/2W5l3Gr and USA, Germany, UK, Japan, France and Australia allocated to water research in a country, if the total flow (http://bit.ly/2W5l3Gr). A low variance in WRP in most of investment into all research themes in a country is countries may be reflective of research capacity and known. infrastructure in a country – i.e. researchers, institutions, and facilities that produce these outputs do not, as a Water Knowledge Flows during 2012-2017 rule, change significantly over a six year period. Larger variations in individual countries’ WRP may probably be Figure 5 show the streams of water knowledge flow seen if a period is extended to 10 or more years. between countries. Only countries having an exchange of more than 100 citations between them are plotted. An average value of WRP may be used as an imperfect Two distinctive knowledge flows can be observed for proxy coefficient for estimation of the amount of funds each major knowledge contributor in the water research:

Bibliometrics of Water Research: A Global Snapshot 11 Figure 4: Water Research Percentage for the top 50 countries with water-related publications during the period 2012- 2017. (WRP for all 88 countries is available at: http://bit.ly/2W5l3Gr

Inward Knowledge Flow (IKF): knowledge being created OKF. Many factors can play a role in the OKF, including by a country through self-citation of the publications the increase or decrease in R&D funding, foreign trade within that country. Such research has only national and development interests in specific regions, or joint impact rather than regional or global. The IKF indicators development projects between countries. for the top 7 countries (with IKF over 5%) are listed in It is not entirely obvious if a defined inward-outward Table 2. It is clear that China has a disproportionately pattern exists on a regional basis: whether countries within high inward knowledge flow as compared to other one geographical region tend to produce more citations countries, which may be, to a certain extent, the result of within the region than globally. Taiwan, for example, only a linguistic factor. This may also mean that China’s high has a significant (over 100) citation exchange with China quantitative publication output may have a lower impact (not the USA), and citation exchange between China regionally and globally than it has within the country. and Singapore is more quantitatively significant than Outward Knowledge Flow (OKF) is the knowledge that between Singapore and the US – likely a linguistic created by a country when its publications are cited matter. However as shown in figures 6 and 7, China and elsewhere. This arguably translates into higher regional the USA-the two largest publishers of water research - are also each other’s main outward knowledge distributors. Table 2: Top seven countries by Inward Knowledge Flow The knowledge flows indicate that despite an overall Country IKF (%) decreasing citation trend for all countries between China 77 2012 and 2017 (including USA and China), water USA 27 research produced in the USA receives a higher level UK 11 of distribution across academia in Europe, America, Sweden 10 and Asia-Pacific. This may mean (if judged by these indicators only), that in water research, the USA Australia 10 remains more authoritative, despite China’s qualitative Germany 9 challenge to USA’s academic outputs. South Korea 6 In 2017, publications produced in the USA received the and global impact: the USA has the highest OKF with largest number of citations (after China) in Germany, India, more than 70% of its publications being cited globally. UK, Canada, and Australia - followed by Saudi Arabia, Italy, Despite conceding to China in the number of research and Israel. The geographical impact of USA published publications, USA still appears to be the leader in the research appears to be diverse; reaching out to four other water-related [research] impact globally, if judged by just major producers of water research outputs (China, India,

12 Bibliometrics of Water Research: A Global Snapshot 2019-03-28 Page 2 Number of Citations by Citation Origin and Ending

Israel Taiwan Iran France Netherlands

United States Italy

Belgium

Spain

Sweden

South Korea

Singapore

Canada

India

Switzerland

Japan China Germany

United Kingdom Australia

1/1 Figure 5: Water-research related knowledge flows during the period 2012-2017; the Online interactive graph is available http://bit.ly/2W5l3Gr, whereby detailed knowledge flows can be generated for any country.

2019-03-28 Page 2 Number of Citations by Citation Origin and Ending

United States South Korea

Saudi Arabia Russia Japan Iran India Germany France

Canada

Australia

China

1/1 Figure 6: Water-research knowledge flows from China during the period 2012-2017

Bibliometrics of Water Research: A Global Snapshot 13 2019-03-28 Page 2 Number of Citations by Citation Origin and Ending

United Kingdom Sweden

Singapore Saudi Arabia Russia Japan Iran India Germany

France

China

Canada

Austria

Australia

United States

1/1 Figure 7: Water-research knowledge flows from the USA during the period 2012-2017

Germany, UK). UK and USA have an equal ‘exchange’ need / importance of a particular research area or be of citations, around 2800 in either direction in a consequence of the pressure to publish – which 2017. Between the USA and Germany, on the is critical for researchers to survive under existing other hand, 2742 USA publications were cited in ‘publish or perish’ paradigm. The number of journals German publications, as opposed to 1243 German in the main water-centric category – ‘water science and publications in the USA ones (which may, to a certain technology’ - increased by 52% over the period and is extent, be a linguistic issue). somewhat similar to the increase in all ‘water-related’ categories in total (Figure 8). At the same time, there Publications in China throughout 2017 were most cited are some fluctuations within water-related categories. in USA, India, and Australia, followed by Japan, Italy, The numbers of journals in ‘environmental science’ and Singapore, Germany, and Canada. In 2017, ten times ‘earth-surface processes’ have actually dropped by 8% more USA publications were cited in Chinese water and 10% respectively, over the period of 2000-2017. research, when compared to Chinese citations in USA Other water-related categories of journals experienced research. The ‘exchange’ between China and India, on varied growth over this period: ‘geography planning and the other hand, appears to be more equal, at roughly development’- 38%; ‘waste management and disposal’ 1300 citations on either side from the other in 2017. – 82%; ‘environmental chemistry’- 109%; ‘environmental engineering’-175%; and ‘computers in earth sciences’- Knowledge flows described above are delivered through 194%. The rates of growth listed above are overall slower water-related journals. Figure 8 shows the time series compared to other interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary (2000-2017) of a total number of journals in all categories SCImago categories of journals for the same period that of SCImago that were considered ‘water-related’: ‘water are not water related: e.g. Computer Science (497% science and technology’, ‘computers in earth sciences’, increase), Biotechnology (168%), Energy Engineering ‘earth-surface processes’, ‘environmental chemistry’, and Power Technology (272%), Nano Sciences ‘environmental engineering’, ‘environmental science’, and Nanotechnology (363%). ‘geography planning and development’, and ‘waste management and disposal’. At the same time, the total absolute number of all ‘water-related’ journals (Figure 8) is already very large Growth in journal numbers may be reflective of the and is reflective of the opportunities to accommodate research output dynamics in a particular thematic area. all identified water-related papers published in 2017. This may, in turn, be either reflective of the societal

14 Bibliometrics of Water Research: A Global Snapshot Table 3 lists numbers of journals published in countries scientific research domain.Indicators of knowledge in 2017 in all ‘water-related’ categories. About 70% of all flow measure the flow of knowledge between any ‘water journals’ are published in the USA, UK, Germany, two countries, as well as ‘internal consumption’ of and the Netherlands, and only 2% - in China, which had, water research outputs within the country of research as was said earlier, the largest number of publications output origin. Water-related journal numbers and their and citations in 2017. The geographical distribution of dynamics between years are used as proxies for the journals is not critical, however, as all journals on SCImago size of the global water research publishing market and are considered as ‘international’ due to their scope and trends in it. All the of the above metrics are examined editorial boards’ composition. Journals are ‘assigned’ to in a global context to develop a quantitative narrative countries based on the location of their secretariat. At of the global water research domain. the same time, such geographical attribution is another way of reflecting the role of various countries in the It is shown that the numbers of water-related documents global water research domain. and citations recorded over the entire period of 2012-

Figure 8: Water-related journal number growth over a period of 2000-2017

CONCLUSIONS 2017 were 1.2 million and 1.5 million respectively. Only 88 countries were found to be publishing actively in the The scientometric analysis of water research presented field of water. Globally, in 2017, over 224,000 papers were in this report uses a large bibliographic data set available published on water-related research. China had a major on Scopus. Several indicators that measure various share of this (19%) followed by the USA (14%) and India dimensions of water-related research are suggested, (5%). In terms of water research output growth, in 2017, quantified on a country basis over the period of 2012- China published 42% more papers than at the beginning 2017. A number of publications and a number of citations of the period in 2012; and China’s publishing rate has are used as primary indicators. They were extracted been steadily growing by at least 5-7% a year since 2012. from Scopus using a comprehensive string of 1057 key The USA increased its water-related publications in 2017 water-related words. Citation impact measures the by 5% compared to 2012. dynamic relation between the two primary indicators. Water research papers per million (WRC) measures the Overall, China and USA are the leading publishers of resources dedicated to water-related research. Water water-related research and have the highest research research percentage (WRP) measures the relative impact, as measured by citation-related indicators importance of water-related research in the overall only. However, the USA has more than 70% of its

Bibliometrics of Water Research: A Global Snapshot 15 Table 3: Number of water-related journals published in a country in 2017

Country Number of Journals United States 569 United Kingdom 501 Netherlands 196 Germany 129 China and France 42 each Canada, Italy and Poland 31 each India 28 Spain 27 Brazil 25 Japan 24 Russian Federation 22 Switzerland 17 Romania 16 Australia, Croatia and Czech Republic 14 each Portugal 13 Slovenia 12 Sweden and Turkey 9 each Belgium, Denmark, Denmark, Hungary, and Iran 8 each Finland, Mexico and Pakistan 7 each Colombia, Greece, and South Korea 6 each Egypt, Israel and South Africa 5 each Lithuania, Malaysia, Philippines and Venezuela 4 each Argentina, Austria, Bulgaria, Chile, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Slovakia, Taiwan and Thailand 3 each Indonesia, Ireland, Ireland, Latvia, Lebanon, Morocco, Norway, and the United Arab Emirates 2 each Bahrain, Estonia, Jamaica, Jordan, Moldova, New Zealand, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Ukraine and Zimbabwe 1 each Regular international peer-reviewed conference proceedings (without country affiliation) and book series 112 Total 2082 publications being cited globally, while China’s in 2017. However, considering the regional and cross water research output appears to be primarily locally boundary nature of water-related problems, the lack of consumed at present. This may be due to linguistic, regional knowledge flows is alarming. quality or focus related issues. In 2017, ten times more USA publications were cited in Chinese water For most countries, the percentage increase in the research, when compared to Chinese citations in USA publications does not translate into an increase in the research. Global water knowledge flows suggest that number of citations. The trend is the opposite: there research is hardly addressing a range of regional water is a consistent decline in the number of citations from challenges. Countries with protracted water problems in year to year. This can be explained by a range of factors, infrastructure, environment, agriculture, energy solutions primarily the short six-year period of analysis used in this do not seem to be at the forefront of water research report. This period may not be sufficient to ensure the production or knowledge transfer. Instead, global water required build-up of citation numbers with time for most research is reliant on the Western - and particularly, US- recent outputs. The decline may also partially be due produced - scientific outputs. Many factors can play a to the low quality or narrow focus of many publications, role in the outward water knowledge flow, including which reflects the pressure for academic staff to the increase or decrease in R&D funding, foreign trade contribute a certain number of publications per year, and development interests in specific regions, or joint and the progressively increasing role of grey literature development projects between countries. There are in scientific discourse, which ‘diverts’ part of the citation signs of regional knowledge exchange developing flow away from peer reviewed publications. between China and India as roughly 1300 research publications are cited on either side from the other

16 Bibliometrics of Water Research: A Global Snapshot In 2017, twelve countries released more than 150 impact measured by citations. Water research results can water-related publications per million citizens. The top achieve increased impact if they succeed in presenting countries in this category - Norway, Denmark, Australia, concepts and solutions in a simple and useful way to Sweden, Singapore - have small populations, but appear stakeholders beyond research circles. to be very productive. The top 15 countries are mostly European, except Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, and Canada. It appears that water research does not ACKNOWLEDGMENTS necessarily emerge as a reaction to water scarcity in a country, but may be incentivised by the traditional The author is grateful to Dr Vladimir Smakhtin economic value of water supplies, geopolitical location, (UNU-INWEH) for overall guidance during this study and focus on regional development, including cross-border for reviewing its multiple early versions, and to Prof Colin water management, development aid spending, or Mayfield (UNU-INWEH) for suggestions and insights globally applicable research in water management. during report preparation. Thanks are due to Ms Yurissa A proportion of water research in the overall research Varela (University of Ottawa, School of Internation output (WRP) of a country appears to be small – under Development and Global Studies, and UNU-INWEH 10% and is even smaller (8% and lower) in most of the intern), Ms Gloria Ko (McMaster University, School of top- publishing countries. Geography and Environmental Sciences and UNU- INWEH intern), and Ms Sumin Yoo (Gwangju Institute Research outputs are delivered through relevant of Science and Technology and UNU-INWEH intern) journals. The analysis reveals that some 70% of all ‘water for assistance with data collection. Comments and journals’ are published in or ‘from within’ four countries - suggestions from two anonymous international reviewers USA, UK, Germany and the Netherlands, and only 2% in are gratefully acknowledged. This research is supported China. However, most of these journals are international by the funds received by UNU-INWEH through a long- if defined by the composition of their editorial boards – term agreement with Global Affairs Canada. yet another reflection of the leadership role that certain countries have taken in water research production. It is shown that the number of water-related journals – the opportunities for publishing water research – have grown more slowly since the beginning of the century, compared to several other research domains like Computer Science or Nano Sciences and Nanotechnology, and that even within water-related journal categories the rates of growth vary significantly. At the same time, the total number of water journals has grown dramatically high in absolute terms to some 2100 at present.

The growth in journal numbers may reflect the research output dynamics in a particular thematic area. This may indicate either the societal need or importance of a particular research area or be a consequence of the pressure to publish – which is critical for researchers to survive under the existing ‘publish or perish’ paradigm, but hardly conducive from a development angle. This report used bibliometric data that are readily available, and the analysis summarised here may be useful in its own right. It can be replicated, for example, to assess a more specific thematic domain, geographical region or country, or to scan research produced over a different time period.

But if water research is to have a greater positive development impact on the countries and regions that face growing water-related problems, it is time to start looking beyond the research ‘box’, to develop measures or protocols that support practical and positive development impacts from of water research – rather than academic

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