Global Research Collaboration for Vapour Intrusion

Abstract

The complexity of the vapour intrusion (VI) transport pathway has received an ever-increased interest worldwide, and an improved and consolidated understanding of the VI issue requires collaboration between international research groups. This study uses the social network analysis methodology, applied to bibliometric authorship for VI research, to discover trends in collaboration, identify lead scientists, organisations, and countries. Furthermore, some of the external factors influencing the collaboration and productivity were assessed. The data suggests that the global research network for VI produced over a time span of 54 years 566 publications via 157 sources. The research network is composed of 437 organisations and 1053 authors from 33 countries. This suggests an increasingly active international collaborative research effort. However, inter-continental cooperation is much less than continental. The top five most central countries in the network are the USA, followed by Canada, China, The Netherlands, and Italy. The researchers with the most publications are from these five countries as well as the top organisations. The social network analysis conducted shows a good approximation of the collaborative structure for the key countries, organisations and researchers involved. Since 2010, the research community has become more stable.