Characteristics and development trends of ecohydrology in lakes and reservoirs: Insights from bibliometrics

Abstract

Ecohydrology, an interdisciplinary subject connecting ecology and hydrology, has developed rapidly in recent years. Because lakes and reservoirs are responsible for the drinking water supply of billions of people and water issues are becoming increasingly severe, the importance of these water bodies is self-evident. Lake (reservoir) ecohydrology has thus attracted considerable attention. This study aimed to analyse the characteristics and development trends of ecohydrology using a bibliometric analysis based on the Science Citation Index database. A total of 21,753 papers from 1900 to 2017 on lake (reservoir) ecohydrology were published in 2,323 journals, and the large majority of them were published in the past three decades. Most research has been concentrated in Europe (40.0%) and North America (31.0%).Among these studies, a few key lakes, for example, Lake Taihu, Lake Erie, Lake Michigan, and Lake Ontario, have been analysed in detail by numerous researchers. The results of a word frequency analysis show that the topics related to ecohydrology have transformed from the microcosmic perspective to the macroscopic perspective, and major topics include eutrophication, global change, models, and ecosystem management. The results of a principal component analysis show that the scope of lake (reservoir) ecohydrology research in Europe and North America has stagnated in recent years, whereas in China, ecohydrology research has developed rapidly over the same period. The development of ecohydrology research around the world is not even, and we need to push for more research on major lakes that are outside of Europe, the United States, and China.

Rebuttal to Peng et al. (2019). “Characteristics and development trends of ecohydrology in lakes and reservoirs: Insights from bibliometrics”. Ecohydrology, 12(3), article number: UNSP e2080

“…These results with 13,461 documents are very different from those in the original paper by Peng et al () with 21,753 documents. Such problems when using SCI‐EXPANDED for bibliometric studies have been pointed out in recent years and published in journals such as Environmental Science and Pollution Research (Ho, ), Sustainability (Ho, ), Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews (Ho, ), and Journal of Soils and Sediments (Ho, ).…”

“…Peng et al () recently published a paper in this journal entitled “Characteristics and development trends of ecohydrology in lakes and reservoirs: Insights from bibliometrics.” The authors of this publication stated in Section 2.1 Search strategy that “The SCI Expanded database, Web of Science (Thompson Reuters Corporation, USA), was used in this study.” and “To cover the general subjects of lake ecohydrology, the following search strategy was used in this study: (TS = ((ecosystem* or phytoplankton* or zooplankton* or benthos* or macroinvertebrate* or macrophytes* or microbial*) and (“water level” or hydrology* or flow* or “water quantity” or wave* or current* or “hydrologic* residence* time” or “lake residence* period*” or “suspended solid*” or “water* temperature*” or light* or transparency* or sediment*) and (lake* or reservoir*))). The publication time period covered 1900 to 2017.…”

“…Therefore, an appropriate bibliometric treatment is always needed when using the SCI‐EXPANDED for bibliometric studies (Ho, , ). Peng et al () considered keywords contained KeyWords Plus which provides the search terms extracted from the title of papers cited in each new article listed in Current Contents (Garfield, ). Due to such problem, Ho's group was the first to propose a filter, named “front page” including the titles, the abstracts, and author keywords, to improve the bibliometric method (Fu, Wang, & Ho, ; Fu and Ho, ; Ho & Fu, ).…”

“…Web of Science (Thompson Reuters Corporation, USA) does not exist anymore; it has been replaced by Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics, USA). Using the same method mentioned by Peng et al (2019), we found 22,837 documents (Data last updated: 14 April, 2019). In our detailed examination, 3,951 (17% of the 22,837 documents), 3,362 (15%), and 4,158 (18%) documents did not mention (ecosystem* or phytoplankton* or zooplankton* or benthos* or macroinvertebrate* or macrophytes* or microbial*); ("water level" or hydrology* or flow* or "water quantity" or wave* or current* or "hydrologic* residence* time" or "lake residence* period*" or "suspended solid*" or "water* temperature*" or light* or transparency* or sediment*); and (lake* or reservoir*) in the document titles, the abstracts, and the author keywords, respectively.…”

“…Therefore, an appropriate bibliometric treatment is always needed when using the SCI-EXPANDED for bibliometric studies (Ho, 2018a(Ho, , 2018b. Peng et al (2019)…”