The “Fabric” of soil micromorphological research in the 20th century - A bibliometric analysis

- Evolution of micromorphology during 20th century
- Number of micromorphology papers increased till 1990
- Shift from soil genesis and classification to palaeopedology and archaeology
- Most important journals listed
- Most important research centres identified

More than 5000 titles of publications (papers in journals, transactions and books) on soil micromorphology, or containing micromorphological research, covering a period from the beginning of the 20th century up to now, were collected and analysed. The parameters evaluated are number of publications, the number of authors per publication, languages, publication media (journals, books and congress transactions), research topics and research centres. For more than 4000 references published between 1900 and 2000 a chronological analysis on the base of a five-year period was carried out. The results presented in a set of tables and graphs illustrate the evolution of micromorphological research during the 20th century.The number of papers strongly increased till 1986/90, and thereafter slightly declined. Whereas papers authored by one scientist prevailed in the early years, multi-authored ones became more important in the last decades. The multilingual tradition that existed in micromorphological publications till the nineteen seventies is practically completely replaced by a monolingual English one. The wide range of national journals and proceedings used to publish micromorphological material is narrowed to a relative small amount of international journals. The percentage of papers dealing with soil genesis and classification decreased the last decades, whereas those dealing with palaeopedology and archaeology show a spectacular increase. In the last decennia little efforts have been made to develop new concepts and techniques (except for some submicroscopic techniques and image analysis in the 1970s) and accent was mostly set on applications. The evolution of the topics covered matches general tendencies in soil science and technical development. Several centres with a regular and considerable output of micromorphological publications (Bibliometric Identified research Centres, BIC) are identified and discussed. These BICs in many cases ceased to exist and were dismantled when the leading micromorphologist left.