Abstract
The use of scientometric techniques can assist in evaluating the importance of a subject, author or article, and also emphasize the trends and contributions of a discipline, scientist or research group, institution or country regarding world-wide scientific and technological advances. We applied scientometric analysis to papers in the Thomson ISI database, in order to understand temporal trends in phytoplankton research. From the years 1991 through 2005, the number of articles on this topic increased. We found 19,681 articles containing the word “phytoplankton” in the title, keyword and/or abstract. Principal components analysis (PCA) was used to summarize changes in the focus of papers published from 1991 to 2005. The keywords gradually changed, in the earliest years indicating descriptive study, whereas in recent years (2000 and after), the keywords became more diversified and related to aspects of technology, genetics, evolution and public health.
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Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank Priscilla Carvalho (Graduate Program in Ecology at Universidade Estadual de Maringá) who critically revised the manuscript and Janet W. Reid for the English correction of the text. Luis Mauricio Bini is financially supported by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq; Grants 302707-2004-2 and 472537/2004-0), Coordenação para Aperfeiçoamento do Ensino Superior (CAPES) and by FUNAPE of the Universidade Federal de Goiás. Fernanda M. Carneiro and João C. Nabout received a scholarship from CNPq and CAPES, respectively.
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Carneiro, F.M., Nabout, J.C. & Bini, L.M. Trends in the scientific literature on phytoplankton. Limnology 9, 153–158 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10201-008-0242-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10201-008-0242-8