Abstract
In recent years, the algae-bacteria symbiotic system has played a significant role in the sustainable development of wastewater treatment. With the continuous expansion of research outputs, publications related to wastewater treatment via algal-bacterial consortia appear to be on the rise. Based on SCI-EXPANDED database, this study investigated the research activities and tendencies of algae-bacteria symbiotic wastewater treatment technology by bibliometric method from 1998 to 2017. The results indicated that environmental sciences and ecology was the most productive subject categories, followed by engineering. Bioresource Technology was the most prominent journal in this field with considerable academic influence. China (146), USA (139) and Spain (76) had the largest amount of publications. Among them, USA was in a leading position in international cooperation, with the highest h-index (67) in 79 countries/territories. The cooperation between China and USA was the closest. The cooperative publishing rate of the Chinese Academy of Sciences was 83.33%, but most of them were in cooperation with domestic institutions, while international cooperation was relatively limited. Methane production, biofuel production, and extracellular polymeric substance were future focal frontiers of research, and this field had gradually become a multi-perspective and inter-disciplinary approach combining biological, environmental and energy technologies.
Highlights
As a limited natural resource, water is an important part of the global ecosystem, as well as human activities
To obtain reliable and accurate details on the topic of algal-bacterial symbiosis in wastewater treatment, publications were obtained on 16 September 2018, using and and as the search query from Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED) database for the period from 1998 to 2017
940 publications related to algal-bacterial symbiosis in wastewater treatment were classified into six document types
Summary
As a limited natural resource, water is an important part of the global ecosystem, as well as human activities. Researchers have found that microalgae and other wastewater-borne microorganisms, such as bacteria, fungi and so on, can form symbiotic consortia, where these microbes affect and even promote each other [11]. Based on the bibliometric method, the characteristics of publication outputs and the performance of countries and institutions were analyzed, and the future research hotspots on microalgae-derived biodiesel through author keyword analysis were offered in a recent study [20]. The basic characteristics (document type and language, subject categories and journals) and the specific performances (publication outputs, growth trend, countries, institutions, keywords) were analyzed, and the global trends of the algae-bacteria symbiotic system for wastewater treatment from 1998 to were tracked based on bibliometric method
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