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International Association for Management of Technology IAMOT 2018 Conference Proceedings

GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE ON ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE: ANASSESSMENT OF THE SCIENTIFIC PRODUCTION

CLAUDIA VANESSA FUENTES CUADRADO Universidad del Magdalena / Santa Marta, Colombia

[email protected]

GERARDO ANGULO-CUENTAS Universidad del Magdalena / Santa Marta, Colombia

[email protected]

FREDDY OROZCO SALAS Universidad del Magdalena / Santa Marta, Colombia

[email protected]

EDUARDO POLO-BRITOUniversidad del Magdalena / Santa Marta, Colombia

[email protected]

ABSTRACT

This article aims to construct a global scientific production profile in theenvironmental science field using a bibliometric approach. For this, relatedscientific literature in Scopus database was studied. Collected data covers theperiod from 2014 to 2017 and was obtained from a systematic search made witha query string which was defined and validated by academic experts in the areaof study. Analysed aspects include document type, countries, institutions,journals, keywords and citations. A co-occurrence analysis between authors,countries and institutions was applied to identify collaboration networks. Finally,the keywords network was analysed to provide main research trends in this field.Outputs show five main research trends: global change, chemistry and wastewater treatment, biomedical research, health and environmental pollutionexposure, and heavy metals pollution. All of them directed to a main globalconcern which is pollution. Keywords analysis provided three interest areasrelated to “chemistry”, “water pollutants” and “environmental monitoring”. Ithighlights China and United States as leaders in the scientific production with thehighest number of documents published, and suggests the research potentialfrom the interdisciplinary work between environmental science and other areassuch as nanotechnology, energy production and storage, and chemistry. Thisarticle serves as basis to researchers in the identification of new researchopportunities in the environmental science field, as well as new scientific andtechnological development opportunities.

Key words: Environmental Science; bibliometric analysis; scientific production;research trends; technology.

INTRODUCTION

Environmental Science is a multidisciplinary field that studies the interactionsbetween the different components of the earth system, as well as the effects of

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these interactions on living organisms. This subject has become a fundamentalarea of research due to the large number of studies carried out on topics of greatrelevance to the world in recent years (Wang M., Ho Y., 2011; Woodcock, P., et al.,2014).

Most of these research activities are related to the adverse effects on theenvironment caused by the increasing impact of human activities: agriculture,inadequate waste disposal, combustion of fossil fuels and other human activitieshave led to environmental pollution, global climate change and health issues(Khan M., Ho Y., 2012; Klepeis, et al., 2001). These problems emerge as newchallenges for researchers as they seek to facilitate the application of science todecision-making and the implementation of new technologies in order to mitigatehuman footprint on the planet (Kerkhoff, L., and Pilbeam, V., 2017).

Bibliometrics emerges as a tool that allows the quantification of advances inacademic literature. Its application extends to various subjects as toxicology(Zyoud, S., et al., 2017), human resource management (Markoulli, M., et al.,2017), neuroimaging (Yeung, A., et al., 2017), relative absorptive capacity(Martinez, H., et al., 2012) and nanoscience (Muñoz, T., et al., 2017). Theidentification of research trends has been one of the main components of thistype of analysis. Similar studies on Environmental Science’s scientific literaturealready suggest a growing interest in issues related to sewage, climate change,carbon and adsorption (Chen, H., et al., 2015, Wang M., Ho Y., 2011; Zhuang, Y.,et al., 2011). Wang M. and Ho Y. (2011), worked on the identification of researchtrends in the Environmental Science field from 1998 to 2009, presentingsignificant conclusions thanks to his extensive keyword analysis.

Advances in data mining and visualization software have contributed to betterrepresentation of information; their use in bibliometric analysis has permitted theidentification of collaboration networks and to better interpret data’s intrinsicrelations.

This study aims to create a scientific production profile where research trends onenvironmental science, as well as the main collaboration networks, are identified.This is done by complementing the analysis provided by traditional methods withthose produced using a visualization software. Results can be used to evaluatethe research performance of the scientific literature, and moreover, to identifynew research opportunities.

METHODOLOGY

Search strategy

Records that served as basis for the study were obtained from SCOPUS database,which is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Toretrieve the information, a query string supported by an expert in the area wascreated. The first search was made from the category suggested by SCOPUS forEnvironmental Sciences called "ENVI", and from there, the search was delimitedby different features such as keywords, publication year, type of document and

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SCOPUS subject category. This delimitation aimed to stablish a workable datasetsize with the most relevant features in terms of relatedness with the mainsubject area. The final query string retrieved documents between 2014-2016 anddocuments already published from 2017 by the second week of 2017,categorized as articles, conference papers, reviews and articles in press. Thefinal query string is presented above.

KEY ( "Adsorption" OR "Air Pollution" OR "Air Quality" OR "Analysis" OR "Bacteriamicroorganisms" OR "Bioaccumulation" OR "Biochemistry" OR "Biodegradation" OR"Biodiversity" OR "Bioremediation" OR "Chemical Analysis" OR "Chemical OxygenDemand" OR "Concentration composition" OR "Concentration parameters" OR"Conservation" OR "Contamination" OR "Degradation" OR "Ecology" OR"Ecosystems" OR "Environmental Exposure" OR "Environmental Impact" OR"Environmental Management" OR "Environmental Monitoring" OR "Fish" OR"Forestry" OR "Fuels" OR "Groundwater" OR "Groundwater Resources" OR "HeavyMetals" OR "Life Cycle" OR "Liquid Chromatography" OR "Mass Spectrometry" OR"Metals" OR "Methane" OR "Microorganisms" OR "Nitrogen" OR "Nutrients" OR"Organic Carbon" OR "Organic Pollutants" OR "Oxidation" OR "Quality Control" OR"Recycling" OR "Remote Sensing" OR "River Pollution" OR "Sediments" OR "SoilPollution" OR "Surface Waters" OR "Sustainable Development" OR "Toxicity" OR"Waste Management" OR "Waste Treatment" OR "Wastewater" OR "WastewaterTreatment" OR "Water" OR "Water Management" OR "Water Pollutant" OR "WaterPollutants, Chemical" OR "Water Quality" OR "Water Resources" OR "Water Supply"OR "Water Treatment" OR "Environment Quality" OR "Biochemical Cycle" ) ANDPUBYEAR > 2013 AND SUBJAREA ( "ENVI" ) AND DOCTYPE ( "cp" OR "ar" OR "ip"OR "re" ).

Pre-processing of bibliometric records

After downloading the records, documents out of the study period, duplicateddocuments and records with incomplete metadata were excluded. Thus, 242.625records were obtained for the study. For further analysis, it was necessary tomanually review some features such as the country of origin, to ensure that validinformation was registered; affiliation, where institutions with more than oneidentification name were renamed to use only one; and keywords, where indexkeywords and author keywords were merged in a single keyword feature, andplural terms where changed into their singular form.

Bibliometric literature analysis

For the analysis of such amount of records, the Microsoft Excel® pivot tablesfunction was used to summarize and better present the information. Much ofthese results are shown in the general publication analysis, where top 15elements of each feature are shown.

From these results, a visual analysis of the information was possible by means ofthe VOSviewer® cluster algorithm. Six co-occurrence maps were created, wherethe collaborative structure among countries, institutions and the degree ofrelatedness between keywords can be better appreciated. Such maps are

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presented in the co-occurrence analysis section. Keywords co-occurrence mapserves as basis for the identification of the most important research trends. Forthis, top 1594 keywords were selected based on a pareto analysis, in whichselected terms represented 46% of the most frequently used keywords in thefield for the studied period. A comprehensive analysis of each keyword cluster isdone along with the review of the published literature, allowing a betterdescription of each topic.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Publication characteristics

Type of documents

Between 2014 and 2017, the number of publication on the studied subject wasstable with a small decreasing trend, maintaining a scope of 75 million to 80million documents per year. Regarding the type of document, the most commontype were articles with an 88,12% of the total, followed by conference papers4,69%; articles in press 3,94%; and reviews 3,25%. There was a notable increasefrom 2015 to 2016 in the number of documents classified as articles in press,going from 992 to 7.424 documents. Contrasting the decrease of conferencepapers from 2014 to 2015, going from 5.081 to 3.557 documents. Articles andreviews presented a constant level of publications along the studied years.

Table 1: Type of documents analysed from 2014-2017 in the EnvironmentalScience field

Type ofdocuments

2014 2015 2016 2017 TotalPercentage

(%)

Article70.13

072.84

764.40

96.408 213.794 88,12%

Conference Paper 5.081 3.557 2.709 36 11.383 4,69%Article in Press 982 992 7.424 162 9.560 3,94%Review 2.624 2.594 2.429 241 7.888 3,25%

Total78.81

779.99

076.97

16.847 242.62

5100,00%

Source: Own elaboration from Scopus database. Note: Documents publisheduntil 13/01/2017

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Figure 1: Type of documents analysed from 2014-2017 in the EnvironmentalScience field. Source: Own elaboration from Scopus database. Note: Documents

published until 13/01/2017

Leading countries

The most productive countries in the environmental science field were China with23,03% and the United States with 21,26% of the total documents analysed,accomplishing together a little less than half of the global scientific production inthis area (Figure 2). North America, Europe and Asia stand out as the leadingcontinents in environmental research.

Table 2: Top 15 most productive countries in the Environmental Science fieldfrom 2014-2017 and Colombia

Ranking

País 2014 2015 2016 2017 Count

1 China 16.975 18.203 18.791 1.919 55.8882 United States 17.241 17.333 15.777 1.241 51.5923 United

Kingdom5.099 5.147 4.810 410 15.466

4 Germany 4.187 4.378 4.174 375 13.1145 India 4.089 4.229 4.050 304 12.6726 Canada 4.044 4.064 3.988 332 12.4287 Australia 3.842 4.186 3.922 321 12.2718 Spain 3.493 3.703 3.723 398 11.3179 Italy 3.200 3.352 3.400 401 10.353

10 France 3.364 3.258 3.186 322 10.13011 Japan 2.573 2.422 2.260 210 7.46512 Brazil 2.099 2.332 2.497 262 7.19013 South Korea 2.077 2.037 2.080 236 6.43014 Netherlands 2.040 2.038 1.946 171 6.19515 Iran 1.594 1.599 1.890 145 5.22846 Colombia 187 232 255 35 709

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Ranking

País 2014 2015 2016 2017 Count

Total 63.007 64.127 61.942 5.615194.69

1Source: Own elaboration from Scopus database. Note: Documents published

until 13/01/2017

Figure 2: Top 15 most productive countries in the Environmental Science fieldfrom 2014-2017. Source: Own elaboration from Scopus database. Note:

Documents published until 13/01/2017

Most productive journals

All documents analysed were published among 1.383 scientific journals. Top 15journals gather 22% of the total registers (Figure 3). From this top, 5 journalsstand out for their rapidly increasing number of publications during 2016, withover 1.500 registers each: Science of the Total Environment, 2.520 documents;Environmental Science and Pollution Research, .1761; Desalination and WaterTreatment, 1.947; Journal of Cleaner Production, 1.893; and Chemosphere, 1.536;denoting, already, a growing interest from researchers in specific areas in theEnvironmental Science field. The main subjects treated in the top 15 journals are:pollution, 46,67% of the journals; environmental chemistry, 46,67%; wastemanagement and disposal, 26,67%; water science and technology, 26,67%;environmental engineering, 20%; and chemistry, 20% (Table 3).

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Figure 3: Top 15 scientific journals in the Environmental Science field from 2014-2017. Source: Own elaboration from Scopus database. Note: Documents


Table 3: Main terms of 15 most productive journals in the field of environmentalsciences 2014-2017

TopicsCount

Percentage

Environmental Science: Environmental Chemistry 7 46,67%Environmental Science: Pollution 7 46,67%Environmental Science: Waste Management and Disposal 4 26,67%Environmental Science: Water Science and Technology 4 26,67%Chemistry 3 20,00%Environmental Science 3 20,00%Environmental Science: Environmental Engineering 3 20,00%Chemical Engineering: Bioengineering 2 13,33%Energy: Renewable Energy, Sustainability and theEnvironment

2 13,33%

Engineering: Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering 2 13,33%Environmental Science: Health, Toxicology andMutagenesis

2 13,33%

Medicine 2 13,33%Agricultural and Biological Sciences: Soil Science 1 6,67%Business, Management and Accounting: Strategy andManagement

1 6,67%

Earth and Planetary Sciences: Earth-Surface Processes 1 6,67%Earth and Planetary Sciences: Geology 1 6,67%Energy 1 6,67%Engineering: Ocean Engineering 1 6,67%

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TopicsCount

Percentage

Environmental Science: Ecological Modelling 1 6,67%Environmental Science: Global and Planetary Change 1 6,67%Environmental Science: Management, Monitoring, Policyand Law

1 6,67%

Earth and Planetary Sciences: Atmospheric Science 1 6,67%Source: Own elaboration from Scopus database. Note: Documents published

until 13/01/2017

Prolific institutions

In terms of affiliations, China takes the lead with 9 institutions from the top 15(Figure 4), contributing with the 9,06% of the total documents analysed. TheChinese Academy of Science comes out as the most prolific institution with morethan 3.000 documents per year, accounting for the 4,23% of the total documentsanalysed. Second in the top is the United States with 4 institutions, they areUniversity of California, United Stated Geological Survey, United StatesEnvironmental Protection Agency and University of Florida. University ofCalifornia is found to be the most productive institution in this country, witharound 1.000 documents per year. France comes in the top with the FrenchNational Center for Scientific Research (CNRS, for its initials in French) presentingaround 600 documents per year. Then, Australia, with University of Queenslandwith around 450 documents per year. All organizations mentioned are publicinstitutions, most of them aggregate different institutes or dependencies thatconcentrate a great number of students and researchers.

Figure 4: Top 15 most productive institutions in the Environmental Science fieldfrom 2014-2017. Source: Own elaboration from Scopus database. Note:

Documents published until 13/01/2017

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Top keywords

Figure 5 shows the top 15 keywords evolution across the studied years, 5 ofthese keywords show an increase of appearances in publications from 2014 to2015, they are: Ecology, with a usage increase of more than 100%; carbon,65,16%; water pollutant in general, 47,65%; soils, 45,83%; environmentalmonitoring, 37,04%; and chemistry, 31,42%.

Figure 5: Top 15 keywords from index and author lists in the EnvironmentalScience field from 2014-2017. Source: Own elaboration from Scopus database.

Note: Documents published until 13/01/2017

keywords research trends

A source of possible research trends can be found in the keywords with thehighest growth from the latest periods analysed (Figure 6).

The keyword with the highest growth rate is HRTEM, which stands for HighResolution Transmission Electron Microscopy, a technic used to study the atomicstructure of samples. It is associated to the study of nanocomposites and theiruse on catalytic reactions (mainly photo-catalysis) for pollution removaltechnologies; second in Figure 5, we find keyword “efficiency”, which is set to bethe aim of most processes that directly or indirectly have repercussions on theenvironment; biochar, used in pollution removal from soil and aqueous solutions,gaining relevance for water treatment processes; magnetism, related tomagnetic graphene composite materials for adsorption processes on pollutionremoval; and electrolytes, for their use on electrochemical energy storagetechnologies.

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Keywords like “fuel economy”, “fossil fuel power plant”, “feedstocks” and“Pm2.5” are related to the global concern for air quality and the environmentalimpacts of a non-renewable resources driven economy; investigations onrenewable energy, energy conservation and CO2 emissions reduction (mainlyfrom coal-fired power plants) are included in this investigation subarea.

Figure 6: Top 15 keywords with the highest growth rate in the EnvironmentalScience field from 2015 to 2016. Source: Own elaboration from Scopus

database. Note: Documents published until 13/01/2017

Scientific Impact

The citations count until 13/01/2017 was 802.763 for a total of 242.625documents published. In average, each register had between three and fourcitations. The number of citations on the studied period shows a yearlydecreasing trend, going from 479.531 to 60.136 cites from 2014 to 2016. Themost productive year was 2015 as it is the year with the highest number ofpublications (79.990); however, the year with the highest scientific impact was2014, accounting for more than 50% of total citations.

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Figure 7: Citations of publications in the Environmental Science field from 2014-2017. Source: Own elaboration from Scopus database. Note: Documents


Co-occurrence analysis

Countries collaboration networks

Interactions among the most productive countries are presented in Figure 8 as aco-authorship network. The size of the circles indicates the weight of the countryin terms of scientific production, the distance between another county indicatesrelatedness, and the lines between them indicate the strength of the link (VanEck & Waltman, 2014). The United States takes the first place in internationalcollaboration, followed by the United Kingdom, China, Germany, France, Australiaand Canada.

Countries appear in five clusters. The red cluster (22 countries and 38% of thetotal publications) contains mostly European countries, characterized by a strongrelatedness; the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands are theones with more international projection. The green cluster (13 countries and 65%global participation) shows a strong association between the Asia-Pacific regionand North America, here the biggest collaborators like the United States, Chinaand Australia can be found. The blue cluster (12 countries and 13% globalparticipation) shows France with a high research cooperation with Near Easternand African countries, as well as relatedness with other European countries, andstrong links with top collaborator countries. The yellow cluster (7 countries and12% global participation) shows mainly Ibero-American countries, Spain leadsthe cluster with a high number of publications (11.317). The purple cluster (1country and 5% global participation) is Canada who has strong links with theUnited States, China, the United Kingdom, France, Australia and Germany.

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Figure 8: Collaboration network among top 55 most productive countries in theEnvironmental Science field from 2014-2017. Source: Own elaboration from

Scopus database using VOSviewer®. Note: Documents published until13/01/2017

Figure 9 shows a density map that highlights relevant areas in terms of scientificproduction. Top 10 leader countries concentrate the highest research activity inthe Environmental Science field. Red areas demark a high number of publicationsfrom a country and their neighboring counterparts. From the map, the UnitedStates, Canada and Australia form a strong association; as well as the UnitedKingdom, Germany and the Netherlands; France and Spain; Denmark andSweden; and then China with a high number of publications, but not associatedwith any other country close to it.

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Figure 9: Density map of top 55 countries in the Environmental Science fieldfrom 2014-2017. Source: Own elaboration from Scopus database using

VOSviewer®. Note: Documents published until 13/01/2017

Institution collaboration

In terms of institution collaboration, 4 clusters are identified (Figure 10). The redcluster contains 42 institutions, and is the most diverse cluster with institutionsfrom 19 different countries: Australia, Brazil, China, Iran, Japan, Malaysia, theRussian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, South Korea, the United States and 8countries from the European Union. The green cluster contains 33 institutions, 7from Canada and 26 from the United States. The blue cluster contains 31Institutions, 27 from China, 2 from Singapore and 2 from the United States.Finally, the yellow cluster contains 13 institutions, all of them from China. Thereseems to be strong relatedness inside the red and green clusters, as they appearvery well delimited; blue and yellow clusters appear close to each other,denoting relatedness among them, but separated from the rest.

Figure 11 shows the density map of the institution network where the ChineseAcademy of Sciences excels for its number of publications. Some importantinstitution grouping can be sight as yellow spots: in the blue cluster, TianjinUniversity, Zhejiang University, Pekin University and Tsinghua University; in thered cluster, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, University of Exeter,University of Copenhagen, University of Melbourne, Ghent University, Universityof Tasmania, University of Helsinki, University of Leeds, Swiss Federal Institute ofTechnology in Zurich and Imperial College London; in the green cluster,Pennsylvania State University, University of Florida, University of Maryland,

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Purdue University, University of Saskatchewan, University of California,University of Arizona, University of Alberta and University of Toronto.

Figure 10: Collaboration network among top 120 institutions in theEnvironmental Science field from 2014-2017. Source: Own elaboration from

Scopus database using VOSviewer®. Note: Documents published until13/01/2017

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Figure 11: Density map among top 120 institutions in the Environmental Sciencefield from 2014-2017. Source: Own elaboration from Scopus database using


Keywords networks map

The VOSviewer ® software was used to group the most frequent keywords intoclusters that represent specific research topics. As result, 5 clusters wereidentified and named as follows: global change (red cluster), chemistry andwaste water treatment (green cluster), biomedical research (blue cluster), healthand environmental pollution exposure (yellow cluster), and heavy metalspollution (purple cluster).

A general review of the map structure (Figure 12) shows that the blue, yellowand purple clusters present high relatedness among them, as most of their termsare dispersed in the map, very close to each other. These terms seem to definethe global context of the major research tendencies identified in this article. Fromthese three clusters, the purple cluster (heavy metals pollution) seems to haveincidence in all clusters as it is centrally located and overlaps with the rest of theclusters.

In Figure 13 we can see high intensity research areas highlighted in red. Topresearch subjects seem to be related to nonhuman controlled studies, waterpollution, wastewater treatment, chemical processes applications on newtechnologies and methods, heavy metals concentration in the environment, soilquality and study cases in China and the United States.

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Figure 12: Network map, top 1594 keywords in the Environmental Science fieldfrom 2014-2017. This top accounts for the 46% most frequent keywords from

the total documents. Source: Own elaboration from Scopus database usingVOSviewer®. Note: Documents published unti 13/01/2017

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Figure 13: Density map top 1594 keywords in the Environmental Science fieldfrom 2014-2017. Source: Own elaboration from Scopus database using


Keywords cluster analysis: Trends identification

In this section, we aim to identify the main research trends in the environmentalscience field throw a keyword network map based on terms co-occurrence(Figure 12). A closer review of the map is done to detail the content of eachcluster:

Global change (red cluster, 39% of the nodes)

This cluster contains terms associated to global change which addresses theresults of the interactions between the elements that make up the earth system.The biggest concern seems to be related to soil and water quality; with specialattention in the relationship between water resource management and pollutionpresented in both surface and groundwater. Rivers appear as key environmentalmonitoring elements for their biological service importance and degree ofaffectation from human activities.

Countries are presented as principal actors in this cluster. Besides leading theresearch activity, China and the United States are the countries where moststudy cases take place. Human activity seems to be the main cause of globalchange, especially due to land use change, urbanization, greenhouse gasesemission, and agricultural and industry development.

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There has been an increase of research related to energy efficiency, primarily onenergy conservation and renewable energy generation; e.g., the use ofperovskite for efficient planar heterojunction solar cells and the use of pseudo-capacitive oxide materials for high-rate electrochemical energy storage (EperonG., et al., 2014; Augustyn V., et al., 2014). This type of research relatescommonly on cost-benefit analysis and efficiency improvements when comparedto previous technologies.

Other emerging areas are environmental economics and decision making,especially when dealing with water budgeting, resource allocation, riskmanagement, environmental policy creation and regional planning.

Chemistry and waste water treatment (green cluster, 30% of the nodes)

This cluster includes terms associated to chemical processes as basis for manytechnologies used for green chemistry and environmental remediation; mostapplications seem to be related to waste management, more specifically onwastewater treatment (Luo Y., et al., 2014). As expected, chemical kinetics playsa relevant role on chemistry application research as it looks to improve the ratesof chemical processes (i.e. reaction efficiency). For this means, catalysts arewildly used, especially on photochemical and electrochemical reactions.

In the wastewater treatment topic, there seems to be research interest onbioremediation techniques such as biodegradation, and the usage of bioreactorfor such purposes. Membrane separation processes also represent a majorresearch trend with reverse osmosis, adsorption techniques and the use ofbiochip in practical applications on carbon sequestration and pollutionremediation (Mohan, D., et al., 2014; Ahmad, M., et al., 2014).

Biomedical research (blue cluster, 14% of the nodes)

This cluster summarizes the laboratory research background from mostnonhuman controlled studies. The interest of researchers in this topic seems tobe focused on three main aspects. First, the drug dose-response relationshipeffects on enzymes and their performance during microorganism metabolism,this relationship can be used to inhibit or enhance some reactions duringmetabolic processes. Second, the toxic effects of bioaccumulation of pollutantssuch as heavy metals and other chemical compounds in living organisms,causing from acute toxicity, to endocrine disruption (Annamalai, J., &Namasivayam, V., 2015). And third, the importance of gene expression and theirusage as biomarkers when monitoring biological effects of contaminants (Vrijens,K., et al., 2015; Avio, C.G., et al., 2015; Regoli, F., et al., 2014). Another growingtopic associated to the genetics field is bacterial DNA mutation and how theirantibiotic resistant genes have become an emerging contaminant issue in theaquatic environments (Sharma, V.K., et al., 2016; Wu, D., et al., 2015; Su, J.-Q.,2015).

Health and environmental pollution exposure (yellow cluster, 12% of the nodes)

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This cluster focuses on the relationship between pollutant concentration on theenvironment and its effects on human health. Air pollution is directly associatedas a risk factor for global disease (Brauer, M., et al., 2016); air quality monitoringis being made on cities where industry activity and road traffic emissionscontribute to the accumulation if fine particles in the atmosphere (Kim, K.-H., etal., 2015). Environmental monitoring appears as a key process for measuringpollution and environmental quality for public health risk assessment purposes.Researchers seem to rely on statistical modelling to better approach numericaldata, since considerable amount of information is collected in these studies.

Several studies have been carried out to expound the risks to which humans areexposed due to daily interaction with substances hazardous to health. Many ofthese substances are toxic and even carcinogenic, e.g. several flame retardantsare known for being toxic to humans (Cao, Z., et al., 2014; Kim, Y.R., et al., 2014),and substances like hydrocarbons, benzo(a)pyrene and polychlorinated biphenylwere found to be potentially carcinogenic.

Heavy metals pollution (purple cluster, 5% of the nodes)

This cluster associates heavy metals as the main water pollutants in theenvironment. Depending on their concentration, some metals can be categorizedas trace element and even be used as catalysts in chemical reactions (Xiao, P., etal., 2014).

Pollution of the environment by heavy metals can appear as consequence ofinadequate waste disposal and high-impact primary sector activities like miningand agriculture (Fu, F., et al., 2014; Li, Z., et al., 2014); once released, pollutiontransportation becomes a great concern since pollutants can be mobilized fromsoil to ground water, rivers and seas. Bioavailability of heavy metals allow themto infiltrate in the food chain or accumulate as sediments, because they cannotundergo microbial or chemical degradation, thus can persist over time (Bolan, N.,et al., 2014). Techniques such as activated carbon adsorption and the use ofzero-valent iron are being used in wastewater and groundwater treatmentprocesses to remove this type of contaminants from the environment (Fu, F., etal., 2014; Tan, X., et al., 2015).

CONCLUSIONS

Research profiling is a very useful process to characterize a body of researchpublications. According to the analysis carried out on the publications collectedfrom SCOPUS on the Environmental Science field, it can be concluded that thescientific production in this area has remained stable across the studied years;even though a decreasing trend in publication numbers was found across thestudied years, a small increasing trend in the global production is ratherexpected, since scientific databases are constantly being updated, to includenewly classified publications.

Global scientific research is leaded by the United States and China producingtogether almost half of the total analysed documents. North America, Europeand Asia concentrate most of the scientific research on the field. Countries from

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South and Central America, and Africa are laggard in the production of scientificdocuments. Main research actors seem to be related to public institutions. In thefuture, new research efforts can be carried out throw state funding andinternational institution collaboration.

Research efforts seem to maintain focus on environmental remediation,efficiency of micro (chemical reactions) and macro processes, and thetransformation from an economy based on the exploitation of non-renewableresources, into a more sustainable one.

There seems to be both theoretical and applied research on the subject,nevertheless, applied research dominates researchers’ interests. A deeperanalysis of the information was made by means of the VOSviewer® software,through the development of bibliometric networks. As result, 5 research trendswere identified: global change, chemistry and waste water treatment, biomedicalresearch, health and environmental pollution exposure, and heavy metalspollution. All of them focused to a main global concern which is pollution.

Keywords analysis also suggest a research potential for interdisciplinary workbetween environmental science and other areas like nanotechnology, for thestudy and development of nanocomposites; decision making, for the constantresource allocation issue highly presented at a governmental level and in thetransitioning process to new technologies; chemistry, for the development ofmore efficient chemical processes; statistics for factorial experimentation andsample analysis; medicine and biology, for the study of pollution effects on livingorganisms; and energy, for being a subject with large environmental incidencedue its conventional production methods and high demand.

LIMITATIONS

As limitations, this investigation might not describe more complex relationshipacross the data, as most of the analysis focuses on describing the globalstructure of the research activity in the subject, rather than more specific sub-themes involved in it. Further and more specific analysis would be necessary tobetter describe relationships at all levels in the subject area. In the same way,initial sample delimitation could have excluded complementary information forthe global analysis.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank professor Bienvenido Marín, from Universidad del Magdalena, for hisassistance in the design and validation of the query string.

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