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Bioenergy research under climate change: a bibliometric analysis from a country perspective

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Abstract

Development of bioenergy will be a key component for meeting increasing energy demands while mitigating global warming. With the intent of identifying current topics of major interest and development of research directions in the field of bioenergy under climate change, we conducted a bibliometric analysis and network analysis from a country perspective based on 3050 articles published since 1999 derived from the Scopus database. The results indicated that USA, UK, and Germany led other countries in terms of number of publications (1006, 366, and 280 articles, respectively) and h-index (greater than 50) in this research area. The USA has also produced a large number of articles in highly respected journals. Compared with developed countries, some developing countries (e.g., China, India, and Brazil) have a larger proportion of publications which are cited less than 10 times and researchers who have academic age of 1 year. The number of publications dealing with some of these research topics coming from developing countries has lagged behind the number of similar publications coming from developed countries. In spite of this, research on sustainable energy systems is still needed for developing countries to further establish feasible systems that can effectively promote global economic development and strengthen climate change mitigation efforts.

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Data availability

This work uses Scopus data provided by Elsevier B.V. (https://www.scopus.com/search/form.uri?display=basic). The codes that support the findings of this study are available from the first author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are very grateful to the editor and three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments that have significantly improved the paper. The authors thank Dr. David Nielsen at AEREA Inc. (www.aereainc.com), and Mr. Shouhua Xu at the Institute of Soil and Water Conservation, Northwest A&F University, for providing suggestions on the manuscript.

Funding

This study was funded by the International Partnership Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (161461KYSB20170013) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences “Light of West China” Program (Prof. Q. Fang).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Soil Erosion and Dryland Farming on the Loess Plateau, Institute of Soil and Water Conservation, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, Shaanxi, China

    Yajie Zhang & Qiang Yu

  2. Institute of Soil and Water Conservation, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Ministry of Water Resources, Yangling, Shaanxi, China

    Yajie Zhang & Qiang Yu

  3. Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China

    Juan Li

Authors
  1. Yajie Zhang
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  2. Qiang Yu
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Contributions

Yajie Zhang: conceptualization; data curation; formal analysis; investigation; methodology; resources; software; validation; visualization; writing—original draft.

Qiang Yu: funding acquisition; project administration; supervision; writing—review and editing.

Juan Li: conceptualization; methodology; software; validation; supervision; writing—review and editing.

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Correspondence to Qiang Yu or Juan Li.

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Zhang, Y., Yu, Q. & Li, J. Bioenergy research under climate change: a bibliometric analysis from a country perspective. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 26427–26440 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-12448-1

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