Publications for evaluations: The impact of soil science and soil scientists

Abstract

According to the records of the International Union of Soil Sciences, there are over 50,000 members of national soil science societies across the globe. Some of them are research scientists; others are practical scientists working as consultants, teachers, or managers of institutes or tracts of land. Only a portion of them work in soil science and actively publish. Currently, over 16,000 journal publications appear annually with soil in the title, keyword, or abstract (Thomson ISI data). If we assume an average of 3 authors per paper, then there are potentially 48,000 authors. If we estimate that 25% of them are non-soil scientists and of the remaining authors each publishes on average three papers per year (Minasny et al. 2007), then there are about 12,000 soil scientists that actively publish. The real figure is probably lower. Despite a reduced number of scientists since the mid-1970s (when the number was highest), the number of publications keeps increasing with about 500 per year