How much vanadium is there in paper? A bibliometric overview of the global scientific production on vanadium

The chapter focuses on the progress made in the field of vanadium research over the last two decades. Many bibliometric studies have appeared in the scientific literature which focuses attention on the global trend for research productivity in the most varied subjects but at the moment there are no studies analyzing the world literature on vanadium. The purpose of this study is to identify research output, and research areas, as well as descriptively and quantitatively characterize the field of vanadium through publication trend analysis over the last twenty years. The growth of the literature on vanadium was found exponential in nature. During 1990-2011 a total of 35594 outputs were published by scientists in this field in various countries. The average numbers of research output per year were 1618. United State is the top producing country with 6224 outputs (17.5%) followed by The People's Republic of China with 4599 outputs (12.9%) and Japan with 3672 outputs (10.3%). The Chinese absolute numbers of research outputs continued to increase over time. The rise of The People's Republic of China has been especially notable, overtaking United States and Japan in terms of its research output in recent years. University of Tokyo topped the list with 375 research outputs (1.05%) followed by Russian Academy of Science with 349 outputs (0.98%) and CNRS Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique with 336 outputs (0.94%). About nine-tenths of the documents on vanadium were published in English language. The most preferred journals by the scientists in this topic were Inorganic Chemistry with 586 outputs (1.65%) followed by Physical Review B Condensed Matter and Materials Physics with 456 (1.28%) and Applied Catalysis A General with 444 outputs (1.25%). The most preferred subject area was Materials Science with 12925 outputs (36.31%). The high frequency keywords were Vanadium (14430 documents, 40.54%), Vanadium Compounds (6662 documents, 18.72%) and Vanadium Alloys (3741 documents, 10.51%). The top-five chemical elements in the keyword list were Chromium (2716 documents, 7.63%) followed by Titanium (2352 documents, 6.61%), Nickel (2331 documents, 6.55%), Aluminum (2184 documents, 6.13%) and Copper (2135 documents, 5.99%).