Department of Information Science, Institute of Occupational Medicine, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Free University Berlin and Humboldt-University Berlin, Thielallee 69-73, 14195 Berlin, Germany.
J Occup Med Toxicol. 2010 Apr 1;5:5. doi: 10.1186/1745-6673-5-5.
Due to constantly rising air pollution levels as well as an increasing awareness of the hazardousness of air pollutants, new laws and rules have recently been passed. Although there has been a large amount of research on this topic, bibliometric data is still to be collected. Thus this study provides a scientometric approach to the material published on this subject so far.
For this purpose, data retrieved from the "Web of Science" provided by the Thomson Scientific Institute was analyzed and visualized both with density-equalizing methods and classic data-processing methods such as tables and charts.
For the time span between 1955 and 2006, 26,253 items were listed and related to the topic of air pollution, published by 124 countries in 24 different languages. General citation activity has been constantly increasing since the beginning of the examined period. However, beginning with the year 1991, citation levels have been rising exponentially each year, reaching 39,220 citations in the year 2006. The United States, the UK and Germany were the three most productive countries in the area, with English and German ranked first and second in publishing languages, followed by French. An article published by Dockery, Pope, Xu et al. was both the most cited in total numbers and in average citation rate. J. Schwartz was able to claim the highest total number of citations on his publications, while D.W. Dockery has the highest citation rate per publication. As to the subject areas the items are assigned with, the most item were published in Environmental Sciences, followed by Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences and Public, Environmental & Occupational Health. Nine out of the ten publishing journals with more than 300 entries dealt with environmental interests and one dealt with epidemiology.
Using the method of density-equalizing mapping and further common data processing procedures, it can be concluded that scientific work concerning air pollution and related topics enjoys unbrokenly growing scientific interest. This can be observed both in publication numbers and in citation activity.
由于空气污染水平不断上升，以及人们对空气污染物危害性的认识不断提高，最近通过了新的法律和规定。尽管已经对这一主题进行了大量研究，但仍然需要收集文献计量学数据。因此，本研究采用文献计量学方法对迄今为止发表的相关文献进行了分析。
为此，对汤森路透研究所的“科学引文索引”（Web of Science）中检索到的数据进行了分析，并采用密度均衡方法和表格、图表等经典数据处理方法对其进行了可视化处理。
在 1955 年至 2006 年的时间跨度内，列出了 26253 项与空气污染主题相关的条目，这些条目由 124 个国家以 24 种不同语言发表。自研究开始以来，总体引用活动一直在不断增加。然而，从 1991 年开始，每年的引用水平呈指数级增长，2006 年达到 39220 次引用。美国、英国和德国是该领域最具生产力的三个国家，在发表语言方面，英语和德语排名第一和第二，其次是法语。Dockery、Pope、Xu 等人发表的一篇文章在总引用次数和平均引用率方面均位列第一。J. Schwartz 在其出版物上获得了最高的总引用次数，而 D.W. Dockery 则在每篇出版物上获得了最高的引用率。在论文所分配的主题领域中，环境科学领域发表的论文最多，其次是气象学和大气科学以及公共、环境和职业健康。排名前十的期刊中，有九个的发文量超过 300 篇，其中一个涉及流行病学。
采用密度均衡映射方法和进一步的常规数据处理程序，可以得出结论，与空气污染及相关主题有关的科学工作始终受到科学界的持续关注。这一点无论是从发文数量还是引用活跃度都可以看出来。
