Abstract
Research on the field of nanomaterials in environment has continued to be a major area of interest in recent years. To present the up-to-date progress in this field, a bibliometric study is conducted to analyze 7087 related publications in the Science Citation Index (SCI) core collection of Web of Science based on the expanded SCI. These publications are identified through using representative keywords in the research directions environment of the Web of Science. This study finds that China and the United States dominate the field; one difference between them is that China issued more independent publications and the United States issued more cooperative publications. In addition, the number of the related publications in Asian countries has exceeded that of European and American ones. A Chinese institution, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has an absolute dominance in this field. Traditional high-impact environmental journals have ruled this field. The number of publications in the Energy and Environmental Science field has gradually decreased. In addition, a co-citation analysis shows that previous studies in this field can be divided into four major branches, and that graphene oxide and nano-inorganic particles are increasingly becoming research hotspots.
Highlights
Gleiter et al [1] developed the first method for producing nanomaterials
Nanomaterials have become a hot topic in environmental studies due to their large specific surface areas, unique micro-interface characteristics, and appealing pollution remediation capabilities [3]
A series of nanomaterials-related studies have been conducted in environmental sciences and engineering
Summary
Gleiter et al [1] developed the first method for producing nanomaterials. Afterwards, the development of technological advancements and engineering applications of nanomaterials was attempted in various fields (e.g., chemistry, physics, and medicine) [2]. An analysis of this network is helpful for guiding future development of NME studies, but this has not been conducted To achieve such an analysis, bibliometrics, i.e., a statistical analysis of existing literature in a comprehensive knowledge system, is a potentially effective method. Previous NME-related bibliometric studies ignore the potential information that word frequencies can provide [18]. The records of these publications contained authors, titles, keywords, keywords plus, abstracts, countries and regions, disciplines, journals, research institutions, publication time, references, and codes Among this information, the country and region information was obtained from author affiliations, and the keywords plus are the words with the highest citation frequencies provided by Web of Science [22]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
