International Comparison On The Studies Of Soil Heavy Metal Pollution Based On Bibliometric

With the boost of economic globalization, the tendency of the utilization intensity of soil has been increasing rapidly and persistently, which resulted in a series of prominent and severe problems. Meanwhile, because of the industrial and urban pollutants and the increasingly application of sorts and quantity of agricultural chemicals, the pollution of soil heavy metals has been getting worse. Heavy metal contamination of soil was invisible and charactered with poor mobility, a long residence time, and irreversibility. Therefore, the pollution of soil heavy metals and its prevention have gotten more and more attention and become the focus of by the researchers and governments.In this study, the bibliometric,competitive intelligence and information management methods were employed to analyze the available literature related to soil heavy metal pollution(SHMP) indexed by Web of Science,CNKI and EPOQUE during 2000-2009, and the basic structure of the collected literature was analyzed by text mining techniques. Based on the targets of the institutions, researchers, most cited papers, subjects, journals, patent and so on, the research level of USA, India, England, Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan and China were compared. The quality of the papers was evaluated according to scientific which include published papers and citations in last decade. The status and perspective of study on SHMP in China and the international community was analyzed by keywords frequency analysis. Based on the results, the United States was set as a benchmark country and case analysis was carried out in China and U.S.A from two heavy metals (cadmium, lead), two hyperaccumulators (Indian mustard, Pteris vittata L) and bioremediation technology. Meanwhile the critical factors of success of the United States and the advantages and disadvantages of China in this field have been analyzed.Results indicated that in 106 countries there are 5083 papers were published during 2000-2009.Among the top 25 institutions which published most papers, there are 10 institutions belong to USA. and four institutions belong to China including Chinese Academy of Sciences, Zhejiang University, Nanjing Agricultural University and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Of 25 most cited papers in the world,7 were from USA and top 3 from USA too, which demonstrate the incomparable influence of American scientific papers. The most cited paper was published by Cornell University with citations of 259. The analysis on journal which published SHMP analysis shown:in the world, the number of papers published on CHEMOSPHERE is 194 with a leading position. CURRENT OPINION IN BIOTECHNOLOGY owns the highest impact factor-7.820; Papers published on ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION are mostly cited with a total citations number of 3900, and on ENVIRONMENTAL MICROBIOLOGY get a highest average citation number-35.24.Journals published in the United States amount to 359 is the most, China ranked second with 191 species. Totally,142 subjects have been involved in the study on SHMP, the number of involved subjects is 93 and 83 in USA and China, and ranked first and second, respectively. The analysis on keyword frequency indicated that China's main research direction is consistent with that of the world, and relatively more attention has been putted on the field of bioextraction, heavy metals arsenic and hyperaccumulator etc, but showing a certain gap between China and the world on biometrics, risk assessment, pollution index research, and reflecting China's studying disadvantage and weakness in fields of biological stimuli, spatial variability, biological monitoring.Key success account for the success of the USA about SHMP research including the science and technology investment, the research direction, the disciplinary layout, the international cooperation, and the legal system. China's advantages in this field are high number of papers, related subjects, patents, and funded projects. China's disadvantages include the low influence of papers, the lack of external cooperation, the unreasonable disciplinary layout and the low impact factor of papers. Finally, suggestions about the control of SHMP were proposed in order to provide valuable information for the planning of development strategies and regular policy of China's government departments.In this study, the order of top 20 countries was firstly determined by the number of articles and their citations in the field of soil heavy metal pollution using synthetically normalized values from indicator-weighted in bibliometrics. Hot topics were firstly put forwarded by analyzing keyword frequency of the articles published by China and other countries, respectively as well as the case study. International comparison on the related research was first carried out by using the theory and method of competitive intelligence. It is an improvement that synthetically application of the competitive intelligence methods, key-success-factor analysis and advantages and disadvantages analysis, to study this theme compared with the similar study in this field.