Recent progress on the non-point source pollution research from the World and China’s perspective: A bibliometric analysis from 2012 to 2021

Abstract

Background With the effective control of point source pollution, the non-point source (NPS) pollution has been widely concerned as the primary reason for the improvement of global water environmental quality. At present, China is one of the countries with the highest research attention on NPS pollution. The Chinese government pays great attention to the environmental problems caused by the NPS pollution. Therefore, it is of great significance to clarify the global trends of NPS pollution and illustrate the importance of China on the NPS pollution research around the world. Results A bibliometric analysis was conducted based on 3407 publications retrieved from the Web of Science during 2012–2021. China, the USA and UK were the most productive countries. Articles published from China accounting from 23–50% between 2012–2021. Regarding the top 20 most productive authors, 17 of them from China. The most productive 21 institutions were located in China (15) and the UK (6). The Chinese Academy of Sciences stood out, followed by the Beijing Normal University. The Sci. Total Environ ranked first in the most productive journals, followed by Environ. Sci. Pollut. Res and Water. China was the major contributor to these journals, accounting from 24–79%. The most highly cited articles were published in Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. The keywords analysis showed that nitrogen and phosphorus were the common NPS pollutants. Agricultural NPS pollution and urban NPS pollution were the main NPS types. The land use change, rainfall and irrigation were the main driving factors of NPS pollution. Load calculation and Integrated management were the key points of NPS pollution technology research. The NPS pollution research objects were mainly distributed in the surface water and groundwater, while the ocean might be the hot areas in the future research. Conclusions This study demonstrates the global trend of NPS pollution research during 2012–2021 according to analyzing the annual publication outputs, source journals, source country, author, institution and the high-frequency keywords. Meanwhile, the importance of China on NPS pollution research is explained from the bibliometrics perspective. It is beneficial for guiding the future research of NPS pollution.