Bibliometric Analysis of Algal-Bacterial Symbiosis in Wastewater Treatment

Abstract

In recent years, the algae-bacteria symbiotic system has played a significant role in the sustainable development of wastewater treatment. With the continuous expansion of research outputs, publications related to wastewater treatment via algal-bacterial consortia appear to be on the rise. Based on SCI-EXPANDED database, this study investigated the research activities and tendencies of algae-bacteria symbiotic wastewater treatment technology by bibliometric method from 1998 to 2017. The results indicated that environmental sciences and ecology was the most productive subject categories, followed by engineering. Bioresource Technology was the most prominent journal in this field with considerable academic influence. China (146), USA (139) and Spain (76) had the largest amount of publications. Among them, USA was in a leading position in international cooperation, with the highest h-index (67) in 79 countries/territories. The cooperation between China and USA was the closest. The cooperative publishing rate of the Chinese Academy of Sciences was 83.33%, but most of them were in cooperation with domestic institutions, while international cooperation was relatively limited. Methane production, biofuel production, and extracellular polymeric substance were future focal frontiers of research, and this field had gradually become a multi-perspective and inter-disciplinary approach combining biological, environmental and energy technologies.

Bibliometric Analysis of Social Desirability

“…The analysis of the citations based on country demonstrated that these citations were interrelated and the countries with the least citations were Uganda and Nepal and as seen in the figure above, the citations in these countries were not correlated with the studies published in other countries. The purple rings in the above figure represent centrality (Liang et al, 2018;Qi, Chen, Hu, Song, and Cui, 2019;Chen, 2005).…”

“…The different colours in network structure depict temporal differences. The light-colored networks represent the more recent studies, while the dark networks represent the older ones (Chen, 2005;Ma, Wang, and Li, 2020;Qi, Chen, Hu, Song, and Cui, 2019). Thus, the studies depicted in yellow were the more recent studies.…”

A comparison of new analysis results and the results in ‘Research trends in proton exchange membrane fuel cells during 2008–2018: A bibliometric analysis’ by Yonoff et al.

“…However, the SCI-EXPANDED is not designed for bibliometric studies but for researchers to find published literatures [ 2 , 3 ]. KeyWords Plus collects repetitive terms within the references that the author(s) cited [ 4 ].…”

Comment to: Qi, Yi, et al. “Bibliometric Analysis of Algal-Bacterial Symbiosis in Wastewater Treatment”, Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2019, 16, 1077

“…Qi et al recently published an article in the journal, entitled “Bibliometric Analysis of Algal–Bacterial Symbiosis in Wastewater Treatment” [1]. The results presented in the original paper are not acceptable because of the use of inappropriate methods.…”

“…Results by using searching keywords (alga* or microalga* or (*alga*-bacteri* and consorti*)) and (bacteri* or (activated and sludge)) and (wastewater or sewage) are the same as those from the original paper [1].…”