Bioelectrochemical Systems for Groundwater Remediation: The Development Trend and Research Front Revealed by Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

: Due to the deficiency of fresh water resources and the deterioration of groundwater quality worldwide, groundwater remedial technologies are especially crucial for preventing groundwater pollution and protecting the precious groundwater resource. Among the remedial alternatives, bioelectrochemical systems have unique advantages on both economic and technological aspects. However, it is rare to see a deep study focused on the information mining and visualization of the publications in this field, and research that can reveal and visualize the development trajectory and trends is scarce. Therefore, this study summarizes the published information in this field from the Web of Science Core Collection of the last two decades (1999–2018) and uses Citespace to quantitatively visualize the relationship of authors, published countries, organizations, funding sources, and journals and detect the research front by analyzing keywords and burst terms. The results indicate that the studies focused on bioelectrochemical systems for groundwater remediation have had a significant increase during the last two decades, especially in China, Germany and Italy. The national research institutes and universities of the USA and the countries mentioned above dominate the research. Environmental Science & Technology, Applied and Environmental Microbiology, and Water Research are the most published journals in this field. The network maps of the keywords and burst terms suggest that reductive microbial diversity, electron transfer, microbial fuel cell, etc., are the research hotspots in recent years, and studies focused on microbial enrichment culture, energy supply/recovery, combined pollution remediation, etc., should be enhanced in future.

Comments on: Li et al. (2019) “Bioelectrochemical Systems for Groundwater Remediation: The Development Trend and Research Front Revealed by Bibliometric Analysis” Water, 11, 1532

“…In addition, articles by Holmes et al [15], Wu et al [18], Vrionis et al [20], Caporaso et al (This is a letter.) [21], and Reguera et al [22] cannot be found by the searching strategy in the original paper [1].…”

“…Li et al recently published a paper in Water entitled "Bioelectrochemical systems for groundwater remediation: The development trend and research front revealed by bibliometric analysis" [1]. Li et al mentioned searching strategy in Section 2.1.…”

“…Using the same method in the original paper [1] resulted in 1695 documents, including 1600 articles. A total of 1609 documents (95% of the 1695 documents) without searching words in their 'front page', are not related to 'bioelectrochemical systems for groundwater remediation', for example the highly cited articles entitled "Electrode-reducing microorganisms that harvest energy from marine sediments" [9], "Microbial communities associated with electrodes harvesting electricity from a variety of aquatic sediments" [10], and "Anaerobic benzene oxidation coupled to nitrate reduction in pure culture by two strains of Dechloromonas" [11], as well as the highly cited reviews entitled "Dissimilatory Fe(III) and Mn(IV) reduction" [12] and "Microbial reduction of metals and radionuclides" [13].…”

“…Summary of the top 10 cited publications of BESs for groundwater remediation during 1999-2018.' in the original paper [1] were not related to 'Bioelectrochemical systems for groundwater remediation'. Any of searching words such as "bioelectrochem*", "bio-electrochem*", "BES", "bioelectro*", "microbial electro", "biolo* electro*", "bioelect*", "microbial fuel cell", and "biogeobattery" cannot be found in the 'front page' of the top ten most frequently cited articles, including 'Stimulating the in situ activity of Geobacter species to remove uranium from the groundwater of a uranium-contaminated aquifer' [14], 'Enrichment of members of the family Geobacteraceae associated with stimulation of dissimilatory metal reduction in uranium-contaminated aquifer sediments' [15], 'In situ bioreduction of technetium and uranium in a nitrate-contaminated aquifer' [16], 'Microbial communities associated with anaerobic benzene degradation in a petroleum-contaminated aquifer' [17], 'Pilot-scale in situ bioremedation of uranium in a highly contaminated aquifer.…”

“…Li et al published 'Bioelectrochemical systems for groundwater remediation: The development trend and research front revealed by bibliometric analysis' in Water using an inappropriate method [1]. This may result in misleading readers of the journal [4,23].…”