Bibliometric Analysis of Status Quo of Wetland Science in China

Currently, research on wetlands is a rapidly developing field. To understand the state of wetland science in China, we used the term “wetland” ,“marsh”, “swamp”, “bog” and “mire” as the keywords to search in the ISI Web of Knowledge and the Chinese Journals Full-Text Database and collect Chinese and English literature on wetland written by Chinese researchers. These publications were analyzed with bibliometric methods by the distribution of the publication year, the author and organization distribution, the journal distribution, the research funds, the research regions and the subjects. The results indicate that core research groups working in the field of wetland science in China have already been formed, although the distribution of research groups was scattered across many institutions and universities. Dispersion and concentration coexisted in the journal distribution of Chinese and English publications—the majority of publications were clumped in a small number of journals, while a minority was scattered in a large number of journals. In China, there are two professional journals publishing papers on wetlands, Wetland Science and Wetland Science & Management. However, it is reasonable to launch an English language wetland journal in the country to enhance communication and cooperation. Research funds for wetland science have a wide array of sources. An important portion of the papers in Chinese was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and provincial foundations, while those in English were supported either by National Natural Science Foundation of China or international funds. Field studies in wetland science were mainly conducted in the regions with great valleys. Wetland hydrology, Wetland Biogeochemical process and Wetland protection and management are the main objects of those studies. With the development of economy, many environmental and resource issues have emerged due to the excessive use and subsequent destruction of wetland areas. Thus, enforcing the protection of wetlands is becoming increasingly popular.