Bibliometric Analysis of Soil Science as a Scientific Area.

It is shown that interdisciplinarity in soil science as a scientific area has been growing ever more rapidly in recent years, while the dissemination of related information over different scientific journals has become excessive and still continues to increase. In particular, the number of Russian journals publishing papers on soil science and represented in the eLIBRARY.ru database increased by more than six times in 14 years (2005–2018) and, by the moment of our study, comprised over 600 names of journals and other Russian-language publications. Since 1997, the segment of papers on soil research has finally shifted from the category of soil science to environmental sciences. The Russian array of publications of 1975–2018 on soil research is analyzed in terms of its positioning in the world. Currently, the number of papers on soil science is actively increasing both in Russia and worldwide. The highest growth rate in the Russian document flow in this scientific area was observed in 2016–2018. In the number of publications, Russian soil science is in a good position in the world. Citation analysis demonstrates an increase in the citation rate in the Web of Science Core Collection (WoS CC) and Scopus databases. Contrary to the widespread opinion on the preferential citation of papers, monographs are prevalently cited in the area of soil science in the eLIBRARY.ru. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]