A bibliometric analysis on the solid waste-related research from 1982 to 2013 in Iran

Background A bibliometric analysis was used to assessthe trend of solid waste-related publications produced byIran and indexed in Scopus from 1982 to 2013. The studyaims to analyze the distribution of languages, countries,institutes, journals, author keywords, authorship patternand co-authorship relationships.Results The publication outputs showed an exponentialtrend (R2 = 0.98) and increased by 45.3 % per year from1982 to 2011. It was received with a decreasing trend to 44papers at the end of 2013. Journal of EnvironmentalStudies published the most papers. University of Tehran(25 %), Islamic Azad University (8.24 %), TehranUniversity of Medical Sciences (7.35 %) played activeroles in the publication and Abduli MA was the mostproductive author (9.12 %) in this field. The English languagewas dominant language of all publications(88.24 %). The appearance of keywords namely ‘‘Heavymetals’’, ‘‘landfill leachate’’ and ‘‘site selection’’ revealsthe importance of release of heavy metals through landfillleachates and site selection issues in Iran.Conclusions A downward trend in the number of publicationsis likely to be continued in future years. The highestcooperation was found among the capital universities inIran and other institutions had a minor role in the productionof articles. It is hoped that transferring the experiencesby main universities and starting up teamworkactivities may increase the number of researches in thisfield. It is expected that this study could be the basis for abetter understanding of development of researches relatedto solid waste in Iran.