IRRIGATION AND DRAINAGE

Irrig. and Drain. (2016)

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/ird.1981

BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF RESEARCH ON WASTEWATER IRRIGATION

DURING 1991–2014*

SEBASTIAN MAASSEN*
Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Institute of Landscape Hydrology, Muncheberg, Germany

ABSTRACT
Bibliometric analysis was applied to identify important trends, emphasis and regions of international wastewater irrigation
research during 1991–2014. The data used in this analysis were taken from the online version of the Science Citation Index
(SCI), and 5699 publications met the selection criteria. Bibliometric analysis showed that most articles were published in
English, with the highest publication numbers coming from the USA, PR China, India, Israel, Spain and Australia. It was
revealed that most publications were from countries with large areas irrigated with wastewater and with great pressure to
overcome problems induced by wastewater irrigation. In recent years, there has been an increase in publications regarding
the negative aspects of wastewater irrigation such as chemical or microbial pollution, rather than agricultural aspects of fertil-
ization. Research trends showed that micropollutants have a major potential to become a hot topic in the future of wastewater
irrigation research. Otherwise, ’classic’ pollutants such as heavy metals are still of great importance, particularly in emerging
countries. Bibliometric analysis revealed thate international research on wastewater irrigation would benefit from expanding
scientific exchange on this topic, as well as from long-term, continuing studies and the sustainable integration of wastewater
irrigation research into future agricultural and wastewater management concepts. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
key words: bibliometric; wastewater irrigation; sewage irrigation; research trend; research emphasis

Received 8 May 2015; Revised 25 August 2015; Accepted 25 August 2015

RÉSUMÉ
L’analyse bibliométrique a été appliquée pour identifier les tendances importantes de la recherche sur l’irrigation avec des eaux usées,
les sujets d’actualité ainsi que les régions dans le monde où se pratique cette recherche, et ce sur la période 1991–2014. Les données
utilisées dans cette analyse proviennent de la version en ligne Science Citation Index (SCI), et 5699 publications répondaient aux
critères de sélection. L’analyse bibliométrique a montré que la plupart des articles ont été publiés en anglais, avec les numéros de
publication les plus élevés provenant des États-Unis, Chine, Inde, Israël, l’Espagne et Australie. Il a été révélé que la plupart des
publications proviennent de pays avec de grandes zones irriguées avec des eaux usées, et avec une grande pression pour surmonter
les problèmes induits par l’irrigation des eaux usées. Au cours des dernières années, il y a eu une augmentation des publications sur
les aspects négatifs de l’irrigation par des eaux usées telles que la pollution chimique ou microbienne, au détriment des aspects plutôt
positifs liés à la fertilisation agricole. Concernant les tendances, notre travail a montré que les micropolluants sont potentiellement le
sujet des recherches à venir sur l’irrigation par les eaux usées. Sinon, les polluants ‘classiques’ tels que les métaux lourds sont toujours
d’une grande importance, en particulier dans les pays émergents. L’analyse bibliométrique a révélé que la recherche internationale dans
ce domaine aurait avantage à élargir les échanges scientifiques, à poursuivre des essais à long terme, et à intégrer durablement des
programmes de recherche dans les futurs concepts agricoles et de gestion des eaux usées. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
mots clés: bibliométrique; irrigation avec des eaux usées; irrigation avec des eaux résiduaires; tendance de la recherche et sujets d’avant scène

*Correspondence to: Sebastian Maassen. Leibniz Centre for Agricultural INTRODUCTION

Landscape Research (ZALF), Institute of Landscape Hydrology,
Eberswalder Strasse 84, 15374 Muncheberg, Germany. E-mail: About half of the world’s population will be living in
maassen@zalf.de
*
Analyse bibliométrique des recherches sur l’irrigation par les eaux usées regions of high water stress by 2030 (World Water Assess-
sur la période 1991–2014. ment Programme (WWAP), 2012). Thus, the percentage of

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

 S. MAASSEN
people with a water supply <1700 m3 person-1 yr-1 is pre-
dicted to rise from 41% of the world population (2.3 billion
people) in 1995 to 48% (3.5 billion people) in 2025
(Courtland, 2008). There will be an increase in water
abstraction for agricultural irrigation and drinking water
due to the increase in the world population. Because of
climate change, an increase in dry periods and a shift in
the precipitation distribution are forecasted, which might
also lead to a higher demand for agricultural irrigation (Food
and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO),
2011). Furthermore, excessive water abstraction and the
non-sustainable use of water resources are leading to salini-
zation in many arid regions and a loss of ecosystems and
biodiversity. These global trends have led to pressure to
implement and promote alternative water resources such as
the desalination of seawater as well as the storage and use
of rainwater (FAO, 2011).
Another important alternative water resource is the use of
wastewater for agricultural irrigation, which is already
applied in many countries. Wastewater irrigation shows a
variety of societal and environmental benefits (Anderson,
2003; Hamilton et al., 2006). There is a continuous volume
flow of wastewater over the year, even in dry periods (unlike
rainwater), which guarantees a stable water supply for
irrigation (FAO, 1992). Wastewater irrigation leads to a
reduction of matter input (nutrients and pollutants) into
surface waters; and nutrients in the wastewater can be
used as fertilizers. When agricultural crops are irrigated
with wastewater, the negative impacts of heavy ground-
and surface water abstraction are omitted. Besides the
positive aspects, wastewater irrigation bears some risk for
human health and for ecosystems due to its microbiologi-
cal and chemical properties. Especially in developing
countries, where untreated wastewater is often used for
agricultural irrigation, there is a high potential for the
transmission of pathogens, soil degradation and for the
contamination of soils, groundwater and surface waters
(Hamilton et al., 2007).
Numerous reviews have been published regarding various
aspects of wastewater irrigation, such as the microbial and
chemical health risks (Salgot et al., 2006; Toze, 2006), the
fate of organic pollutants (Weber et al., 2006; Müller
et al., 2007) and salt management (Rengasamy, 2006), as
well as reviews of wastewater irrigation in particular regions
(Angelakis and Bontoux, 2001; Bixio et al., 2006; Janosova
et al., 2006). Hamilton et al. (2007) give a broad overview
of the global status of wastewater irrigation and future
challenges. However, no studies have been conducted to
map the international scientific research output on wastewa-
ter irrigation systematically.
Bibliometric analysis is a useful tool to analyse publica-
tions in a certain research field. It is a quantitative approach
to study the metadata of scientific publications in contrast to
Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
the qualitative approach of narrative scientific literature
reviews, which might often be subject to bias by the
researcher (Tranfield et al., 2003). However, bibliometric
analysis might also be flawed because publication numbers
do not necessarily indicate the importance of a certain
research subject. But bibliometrics is a helpful method to
detect research trends, whereas a narrative literature review
is more suited to compiling scientific knowledge on a certain
research field and to identify research deficits. Bibliometric
studies in environmental science have been conducted
regarding various research aspects, e.g. wetlands (Zhang
et al., 2010a) and constructed wetlands (Zhi and Ji, 2012),
water resources (Wang et al., 2011), drinking water (Hu
et al., 2010; Fu et al., 2013) and water pollution (Sun
et al., 2012; Yanhua et al., 2012). Some bibliometric studies
have focused on general aspects of environmental science
(Karlsson et al., 2007; Khan and Ho, 2012; Dragos and
Dragos, 2013).
The aim of this study is to analyse hot topics and impor-
tant regions of wastewater irrigation research as well as to
use historical bibliometric data to gain new insights into
trends and emphasis of international wastewater irrigation
research.
METHODS
The data used in this bibliometric analysis were taken from
the online version of the Science Citation Index (SCI) (Web
of Science Core Collection), which is the multidisciplinary
database of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI).
The impact factor (IF) of the journals was obtained from
the 2013 Journal Citation Reports (JCRs). The following
word combinations were searched in terms of topics within
the time period 1991–2014: irrigat* (which includes irriga-
tion and irrigated) in combination with ’waste water’,
’wastewater’, ’sewage’, ’effluent*’ (which includes effluent
and effluents) or ’reclaimed’. The topic search includes
searches in titles, abstracts and keywords. The analysis
was carried out in February 2015. In total, 5699 publications
met the selection criteria. The selected publications were
further analysed regarding article characteristics (language,
document type, country and citations), publication patterns
(main journals, journal category and impact factor), and
research emphasis (keyword distribution, research trends).
Besides keyword analysis, word clusters were analysed
by combining single words to broader research topics. With
this method it is possible to overcome the weaknesses of
analysing individual keywords and to identify research
hotspots and trends in different countries (Mao et al.,
2010). Each word cluster was composed of several sup-
porting keywords. Table I shows the word clusters and
keyword combinations which were created for this analysis.
Irrig. and Drain. (2016)
 BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF RESEARCH ON WASTEWATER IRRIGATION (1991–2014)
Table I. Word clusters and keyword combinations
Word cluster Keyword combination
(Boolean search)
Soil soil*
Agriculture agricultur* OR crop* OR vegetable* OR short
rotation OR energy crop* OR growth OR
vegetation* OR yield*
Quality qualit*
Nutrients nutrient* OR phosph* OR nitr*
Heavy metals heavy metal* OR heavy-metal* OR Cr OR
Pb OR Cd OR Cu OR Zn OR Ni OR Hg OR
chromium OR cadmium OR copper OR zinc
OR nickel OR mercury OR arsenic
Groundwater groundwater OR ’ground water’ OR aquifer*
Micropollutants xeno* OR endocrin* OR antibiotic* OR
pharma* OR micropollutant* OR emerging
OR ’personal care product*’ OR *icide* OR
*biocide*
Recharge recharg*
Biological risk microb* OR pathogen* OR bacteria* OR vir*
OR parasit*
Salinity salt* OR salin*
OR = Boolean search operator; * = wildcard.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Article characteristics
Out of the 5699 articles that were analysed in this study,
5539 (97%) were published in English, followed at a dis-
tance by Portuguese (72; 1.3%), Spanish (38; 0.7%), French
(16; 0.3%) and German (9; 0.2%). Articles were the most
frequent document type (4737; 82%), followed by Proceed-
ings (1227; 22%), whereas there were only small percent-
ages of other document types (e.g. Reviews 193; 3.4%,
Book Chapters 63; 1.1%). This confirms that most journals
in the ISI database are in English (Chiu and Ho, 2007) and
that English is the main language in many scientific fields
(Zhang et al., 2010b). Articles are the most important
document types for scientific exchange. Proceedings, i.e.
published papers of conferences or workshops, are the
second-most important document type, but since Proceed-
ings are mostly not peer-reviewed they do not appear in
the ISI database.
Publication output characteristics
The total number of annual publications showed a signifi-
cant increase from 1991 (90) to 2014 (430) Figure 1(b). In
2013, the highest number of publications was reached dur-
ing the period of analysis (508). Comparing the publication
numbers of wastewater irrigation with publication numbers
of the more general topic ’irrigation’ (search term ’irrigat*),
it became obvious that the increases were similar, albeit with
Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
tenfold higher publication numbers for the topic ’irrigation’.
Thus, the total publication number for ’irrigation’ was 69
620, the publication number for the year 1991 was 1420
and for 2014 it was 5249. Zhang et al. (2010a, 2010b) con-
cluded from a bibliometric study on wetland research that a
progressive increase in publication numbers is an indicator
of stable growth and increasing communication in a research
field, i.e. in the research related to wastewater irrigation
during the past 24 years.
The country distribution of publications revealed a strong
predominance of articles from the USA (1095; 19.5%),
followed by PR China (540) and India (474) with approx.
8% of total publications. Israel (384), Spain (365), Australia
(345), Germany (216) and England (206) provided approx.
4–7% of total publications (Figure 1(a)). The publication
numbers for all top 10 productive countries showed signifi-
cant increases after 1991, with strongest increases for the
USA, PR China and India. In PR China and India, stronger
increases in publication numbers did not start until 2002
(Figure 1(b)).
The predominance of articles from the USA has also been
described for other scientific fields, e.g. by Li et al. (2009),
Khan and Ho (2012) and Wang et al. (2014). Two possible
reasons for this predominance might be the large research
budgets and the tendency of reviewers from the USA to
preferably accept American articles (Link, 1998). The rapid
economic growth and agricultural development in PR China
and India resulted in an increase in agricultural and environ-
mental research, and thus in an increase in publication
numbers. Furthermore, the publication output of wastewater
irrigation studies is affected by the percentage of wastewater
used for irrigation as well as by the area which is irrigated
with wastewater. In the emerging countries of PR China, In-
dia and Mexico, globally the largest area is irrigated with
untreated wastewater (PR China >3.6 million ha, India >1
million ha, Mexico 190 000 ha) (Lautze et al., 2014). Of
the 20 most productive countries in terms of wastewater
irrigation publications, the following countries are among the
top 20 in terms of areas irrigated with untreated wastewater:
Pakistan (44 000 ha), Turkey (9000 ha), and Egypt (4000 ha)
(Lautze et al., 2014). The following countries from the top
20 publication list contain the largest areas with treated
wastewater irrigation: Mexico (69 000 ha), Israel (66 000 ha),
Egypt (41 000 ha), Italy (37 000 ha), Australia (20 000 ha),
USA (15 000 ha), Spain (9500 ha), Turkey (9000 ha), France
(4000 ha) and Germany (3000 ha) (US Environmental Protec-
tion Agency (EPA), 2004; Lautze et al., 2014).
In Israel, about 84% of wastewater is reused for irrigation,
which is globally the highest percentage (Rejwan, 2011). In
Spain, 5% of wastewater is currently reused (with approx.
75% agricultural reuse), a figure which is expected to
increase to 20% in the near future (Bixio et al., 2006;
Barceló and Petrovic, 2011). Australia reuses about 9% of
Irrig. and Drain. (2016)
 S. MAASSEN
Figure 1. Number of publications on wastewater irrigation 1991–2014: (a) total publication number per country for the 20 most productive countries, (b)
publication number (sum) per year for the 10 most productive countries, total publication number and total publication number for the more general topic
’irrigation’ (search term ’irrigat*’)
wastewater (approx. 50% of this for agricultural purposes),
which is also expected to increase to 30% total reuse
(Hamilton et al., 2007; US EPA, 2012). In Australia, Spain
and Israel, guidelines for water reuse have been published;
e.g. in Australia there are the ’Australian Guidelines for
Water Recycling’ (NWQMS, 2006) as well as ’Guidelines
for Environmental Management: Use of Reclaimed Water’
(Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Victoria, 2003),
and in Spain there are the ’Spanish Regulations for Water
Reuse’ (Spanish Association for Sustainable Water Reuse
(ASERSA), 2007). In these countries, high water reuse
percentages, high environmental standards and guidelines
for water reuse regarding microbial and chemical risks might
have promoted the output of research on wastewater irrigation.
Subject categories and journals
Publications on wastewater irrigation covered 145 Web of
Science subject categories. The highest-ranked subject cate-
gories were ’Environmental sciences’ (2428; 43%), ’Water
resources’ (1899; 33%), and ’Environmental engineering’
(1153; 20%) as well as ’Agronomy’ (553) and ’Soil science’
(517) with approx. 9–10% of total publications. Subject
categories in the field of engineering (agricultural, civil
and chemical), multidisciplinary agriculture and geosciences
as well as plant sciences and ecology showed publication
outputs of 4–6% of total publications.
Publications analysed in this study appeared in 858 differ-
ent journals and other publication sources. Table II shows
the top 10 productive publication sources on wastewater
irrigation. The journal Water Science and Technology pub-
lished the most papers (417). Since papers on wastewater
irrigation are distributed among more than 800 different publi-
cation sources, the percentage of the journal Water Science
and Technology regarding total publications is fairly low
(7.3%). The next journals in the ranking list, with approx.
Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
2.3–2.7% of total publications, are Agricultural Water Man-
agement, Journal of Environmental Quality and Desalination.
Of all the publications, 26.8% were in the top 10 core journals
in the field of wastewater irrigation.
The mean impact factor for these top 10 publication
sources was approx. 2.8, with maximum values for Water
Research (5.32) and Desalination (3.96). Papers on waste-
water irrigation showed 12.1 citations on average, which
was about 5 times higher than the average impact factor of
these journals. This indicates that wastewater irrigation
papers made a significant positive contribution to these
journals’ impact factors and that scientific transfer in this
field is rapidly increasing (Yanhua et al., 2012).
Research emphasis
Keyword analysis. The direction of future research can
be analysed using keyword analysis and title word search
(e.g. Zhi and Ji, 2012). Bibliometric keyword analysis can be
conducted by using author keywords as well as KeywordsPlus.
ISI generates KeywordsPlus, which are words or phrases that
appear in the reference titles of an article, but not necessarily
in the article title itself (Zhi and Ji, 2012) and thus are indirectly
related to the content of the article (Garfield, 1990). By a
synthesized analysis of title words and author keywords in
combination with KeyWordsPlus it is possible to broaden
the focus of the bibliometric analysis, revealing research
hotspots and discovering scientific research trends (Chiu
and Ho, 2007; Xie et al., 2008; Li et al., 2009).
Of the 5699 publications in this study, 4577 (80.3%) had
author keywords, while 4343 (76.2%) had KeywordsPlus.
For keyword analysis, author keywords and KeywordsPlus
were pooled, which produced a database of 51 340 total
keywords and 16 808 different keywords in one database.
Results revealed that 13 989 keywords (83.2%) were used less
than three times. This large percentage of rarely used keywords
Irrig. and Drain. (2016)
 BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF RESEARCH ON WASTEWATER IRRIGATION (1991–2014)

Table II. Top 10 publication sources on wastewater irrigation. The table contains 13 items, since Acta Horticulturae and Water Research, as
well as Science of the Total Environment and Communications in Soil Science and Plant Analysis, showed the same total publication numbers

Source title TP TC TC/TP IF Subject category Rank in category

Water Science and 417 (7.3%) 3 611 8.7 1.21 Engineering, environmental 29/46
Technology Environmental sciences 139/216
Water resources 44/81
Agricultural Water 163 (2.7%) 2 556 15.7 2.33 Agronomy 16/79
Management Water resources 18/81
Journal of Environmental 133 (2.3%) 2 160 16.2 2.35 Environmental sciences 76/216
Quality
Desalination 129 (2.3%) 2 105 16.3 3.96 Engineering, chemical 9/133
Water resources 2/81
Environmental Monitoring 103 (1.8%) 792 7.7 1.68 Environmental sciences 107/216
and Assessment
Acta Horticulturae 95 (1.7%) 60 0.6 – – –
Water Research 95 (1.7%) 1 856 19.5 5.32 Engineering, environmental 3/46
Environmentals ciences 9/216
Water resources 1/81
Water Air and Soil Pollution 78 (1.4%) 680 8.7 1.69 Environmental sciences 106/216
Meteorol. and atmospheric sci. 40/76
Water resources 31/81
Ecological Engineering 67 (1.2%) 1 001 14.9 3.04 Ecology 42/141
Engineering, environmental 9/45
Environmental sciences 47/216
Chemosphere 66 (1.2%) 1 722 26.1 3.50 Environmental sciences 32/216
Desalination and Water 62 (1.1%) 107 1.7 0.99 Engineering, chemical 78/133
Treatment Water resources 55/81
Communications in Soil 59 (1.0%) 418 7.1 0.42 Agronomy 63/79
Science and Plant Analysis Chemistry, analytical 70/76
Plant sciences 172/199
Soil science 33/34
Science of the Total 59 (1.0%) 1 351 22.9 3.16 Environmental sciences 40/216
Environment
Total, average 1 526 (26.8%) 18 419 12.1 2.76
(Total) (Average)

might be attributed to a diverse research focus and a disconti-
nuity in the research (Zhi and Ji, 2012), as well as to the use
of different synonyms, abbreviations and spelling variations
(Li et al., 2009). Furthermore, the large number of rarely used
keywords could be an indicator that the majority of wastewater
irrigation research is based more on empirical studies without
the background of an internationally standardized theoretical
structure, i.e. without a specific scientific school.
For further keyword analysis, the search keywords ’sew-
age’, ’irrigation’, ’waste(-)water’ and ’effluent’ as well as the
very general keywords ’reuse’, ’water’, ’water reuse’, ’waste
(-)water reuse’ and ’waste(-)water irrigation’ were excluded.
Figure 2 and Table III show the top 20 keywords in this study
using 5-year intervals to minimize annual fluctuations. The
highest-ranked keyword regarding the whole analysed time
span was ’soil(s)’ with 13.4% of total publications. The key-
word ’heavy(-)metal(s)’, which held the second rank in total
publications (10.5%), showed a relatively strong increase from
11th rank in 1991–1995 to second and third rank for the other
time periods. The keywords with the strongest increases
compared to the rankings of 1991–1995 were: ’plant(s)’ (from
31st to 4th rank), ’accumulation’ (from 44th to 8th rank),
’contamination’ (from 44th to 6th rank), ’management’ (from
91st to 12th rank), ’vegetable(s)’ (from 44th to 256th to 180th
to 10th rank), ’organic(-)matter’ (from 202nd to 18th rank) and
’impact(s)’ (from 202nd to 17th rank). The keyword ’water(-)
quality’, which held the second rank in 1991–1995, showed
the strongest decrease to 19th rank in 2010–2014, meaning
the mean ranking in total publications was 10th. Other
keywords with decreases compared to the rankings of
1991–1995 were ’nitrogen’ and ’removal’. The rankings of
some keywords showed strong fluctuations with no clear
trends, but with peaks in certain time periods. Thus, the key-
words ’nitrogen (N)’, ’salinity’, ’zinc (Zn)’ and ’nitrate(s)’
showed maxima in the time periods between 1996 and 2005.
From keyword rank analysis it became obvious that there
was a strong increase in research dealing with the negative
aspects of wastewater irrigation (keywords ’heavy metal(s)’,
’accumulation’, ’contamination’ and ’impact(s)’), in particular
in plants (keywords ’plant(s)’ and ’vegetable(s)’), as well as

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Irrig. and Drain. (2016)
 S. MAASSEN

Figure 2. Rankings of the top 20 keywords in publications on wastewater irrigation, 1991–2014

Table III. Top 20 keywords in publications on wastewater irrigation, 1991–2014. TP = total publications

TP TP (%) 1991–1995(%) 1996–2000 (%) 2001–2005 (%) 2006–2010 (%) 2010–2014 (%)

Soil(s) 762 13.4 4.3 8.4 12.3 14.1 17.3

Heavy(-)metal(s) 600 10.5 1.8 4.7 7.2 13.0 14.2
Quality 324 5.7 2.1 1.9 4.1 7.0 7.7
Plant(s) 285 5.0 0.9 2.1 4.1 5.7 6.9
Nitrogen (N) 281 4.9 2.1 4.6 7.3 4.7 4.7
Sewage(-)sludge(s) 275 4.8 1.8 3.3 4.7 6.2 4.9
Cadmium (Cd) 251 4.4 1.4 2.8 2.8 5.9 5.1
Removal 249 4.4 1.1 3.3 2.2 5.4 5.7
Ground( )water(s) 235 4.1 2.1 3.3 3.2 5.1 4.5
Water(-)quality 230 4.0 3.4 3.6 5.0 4.1 3.8
Salinity 229 4.0 1.1 3.4 4.6 4.0 4.6
Contamination 224 3.9 0.7 1.1 2.3 4.7 5.9
Accumulation 217 3.8 0.7 2.0 2.6 4.4 5.3
Management 193 3.4 0.5 1.0 2.2 4.2 4.8
Zinc (Zn) 175 3.1 0.9 2.6 3.9 3.4 3.0
Vegetable(s) 174 3.1 0.7 0.3 0.5 4.2 5.0
Phosphorus (P) 170 3.0 1.4 1.7 3.4 3.4 3.3
Organic(-)matter 157 2.8 0.2 1.0 1.5 3.2 4.3
Impact(s) 156 2.7 0.2 1.4 2.0 2.9 4.1
Nitrate(s) 155 2.7 1.1 3.4 3.9 2.2 2.7
Total 5 699 437 702 985 1 733 1 842

possibilities to overcome these problems (keyword ’manage-
ment’). There was a decrease or fluctuations with no trend in
articles dealing with the nutrient and fertilization aspects of
wastewater irrigation (keywords ’nitrogen (N)’, ’sewage(-)
sludge(s)’, ’phosphorus (P)’ and ’nitrate(s)’). Rankings of
studies regarding certain toxic or harmful substances such as
’cadmium (Cd)’, ’zinc (Zn)’ or salt (keyword ’salinity’)
showed stronger fluctuations and thus relatively discontinuous
research activities related to these keywords. It can be
concluded that in recent years, wastewater irrigation has
been regarded as more critical with a stronger emphasis on
research into pollution problems and risks rather than into
agricultural aspects (use of wastewater as an irrigation water
resource, use of nutrients in the wastewater as fertilizers).
Word cluster analysis. The analysis of word clusters
revealed the following total publication numbers for the
clusters: 3559 (agriculture), 2957 (soil), 2142 (quality),
2029 (nutrients), 1276 (bio risk), 1246 (heavy metals),
1116 (groundwater), 970 (salinity), 493 (micropollutants)
and 241 (recharge). The publication numbers for all word
clusters showed some fluctuations and increased during the
analysed period (Figure 3). The highest increases were found
for the very general word clusters ’agriculture’ and ’soil’, with
stronger slopes starting in 2001. Regarding the trend lines of
publication numbers to minimize annual fluctuation, it became
obvious that the word clusters ’quality’ and ’nutrients’ showed
similar increases which started to rise in 2005. The word clus-
ters ’bio risk’, ’heavy metals’, ’groundwater’ and ’salinity’ also
showed similar trends, with higher increases starting in 2005
(for heavy metals starting as early as 2000). For the word clus-
ter ’micropollutants’, the publication numbers were relatively
low, but a stronger increase started in 2005, becoming steeper
until 2012. The word cluster ’recharge’ showed the lowest

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Irrig. and Drain. (2016)
 BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF RESEARCH ON WASTEWATER IRRIGATION (1991–2014)
Figure 3. (a) Numbers of publications and (b) polynomic trend lines of numbers of publications on wastewater irrigations per year for the analysed word
clusters, 1991–2014
publication number as well as the lowest increase in publica-
tion numbers.
The results of word cluster analysis show that there was a
steadily rising publication output except for the aspects of
groundwater recharge. The agricultural and soil-related
aspects of wastewater irrigation (word clusters ’agriculture’
and ’soil’) were the main issues in wastewater irrigation
research, with increasing tendencies since 2000. Besides
these very general word clusters, the word clusters regarding
aspects of ’quality’ and ’nutrients’ of wastewater irrigation
were also of great importance. Interestingly, these word
clusters showed similar trends, which shows that there is
not only increasing research activity regarding the beneficial
aspects of wastewater (word cluster ’nutrients’), but also the
awareness that there are negative impacts of wastewater irri-
gation for example on water or soil quality, which have to be
controlled (word cluster ’quality’). Other negative aspects of
wastewater irrigation (word clusters ’salinity’, ’bio risk’,
’heavy metals’) also showed similar increasing trends, with
’heavy metals’ being the most ’classic’ pollutants in the con-
text of wastewater irrigation, with stronger slopes starting in
2000 and earlier. The relatively steep increase in publication
numbers since 2005 for the cluster ’micropollutants’ reveals
that the research on micropollutants, pharmaceuticals and
endocrine substances in combination with wastewater irriga-
tion is still very young, with a high potential for becoming a
hot topic in the future.
Regarding the rankings of word clusters for different
countries, it becomes obvious that there was a strong pre-
dominance of articles from the USA, where the highest
ranking was always found except for the word cluster
’heavy metals’ (Figure 4). For this cluster, India had the
highest ranking, followed by PR China and the USA. Inter-
estingly, for the word cluster ’heavy metals’, the countries
Pakistan and Turkey, which for no other word cluster were
among the top five productive countries, showed the next
highest rankings with total ranks of 4 and 5, respectively.
For most of the analysed word clusters, the USA and PR
China were among the top five productive countries,
Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
followed by India, Israel, Spain and Australia. Due to the
highest rankings of articles from the USA and the strong
predominance of articles from PR China and India, coun-
tries that outrank the publication numbers of these countries
can give hints of further important research regions for
certain word clusters. Results revealed that these important
research regions were the following: Israel, Spain and
Australia for ’bio risk’ and ’salinity’; Israel and Spain for
’quality’; Australia for ’nutrients’ (outranking only India);
Israel for ’recharge’; and Spain, Germany, Israel and
Mexico for ’micropollutants’. Mexico was in the top 10 list
for all word clusters (except for ’nutrients’), albeit with total
ranks between 6 and 10 and strong fluctuation between the
analysed time periods. Germany reached the top five list
for the word clusters ’micropollutants’ and ’recharge’.
When comparing the ranks of 1991–1995 to later periods,
the highest rank increases were found for PR China. Spain also
showed high increases for certain word clusters (e.g. the word
clusters ’agriculture’, ’quality’, ’nutrients’, ’bio risk’ and
’micropollutants’). Stronger increases were also found for the
following word clusters: ’agriculture’ in Greece and Pakistan,
’soil’ in Pakistan and ’quality’ in Italy. On the other hand, the
highest decreases in publication ranking were detected in New
Zealand (the word clusters ’soil’, ’nutrients’ and ’groundwa-
ter’) and England (’agriculture’, ’quality’, ’heavy metals’ and
’bio risk’). Slight decreases for all word clusters were also
found in Australia (except for the word clusters ’quality’ and
’bio risk’) and Israel (except ’salinity’ and ’recharge’).
From country-related word cluster analysis it can be
concluded that besides the predominance of articles from
the USA, PR China and India for most word clusters, there
is a strong research output in other countries with a high per-
centage of wastewater reuse, most notably Spain, Australia
and Israel. In these countries, the research emphasis lies on
aspects which represent local environmental and agricultural
conditions, e.g. salinization or microbial risks. Spain shows
the highest ranks in Europe for most word clusters. This and
the strong rank increases for Spain reveal that wastewater
irrigation and its careful application are becoming more
Irrig. and Drain. (2016)
 S. MAASSEN

Figure 4. Rankings of analysed word clusters for the top 10 countries 1991–2014. The graphs of some word clusters show more than 10 countries, since some
countries showed similar total rank numbers here

and more important there. The high rankings of emerging
countries as Pakistan, Turkey, Mexico and Iran (apart from
PR China and India) for the word cluster ’heavy metals’
show that in these countries wastewater irrigation might
have induced health or environmental problems which are
being addressed increasingly frequently.
Top-cited publications
Regarding the 10 top-cited publications in the context of
wastewater irrigation (Table IV), it becomes obvious that 4
of these publications were case studies dealing with the
effect of wastewater irrigation on the heavy metal contents
of soils, crops and vegetables (Khan et al., 2008; Rattan
et al., 2005; Sharma et al., 2007; Mapanda et al., 2005).
Three of the top-cited articles are review articles which
discuss more general aspects such as irrigation under water
scarcity (Pereira et al., 2002), risks and benefits of wastewa-
ter irrigation (Toze, 2006) as well as wastewater reuse prac-
tice in the Mediterranean region (Angelakis et al., 1999).
Microbial aspects in the context of wastewater irrigation
are discussed in an article about produce handling to mini-
mize microbial contamination (Beuchat and Ryu, 1997) as
well as in an article about the transmission of pathogens in
Chile (Hopkins et al., 1993). Another of the remaining 10
top-cited articles looks at the effect of wastewater irrigation
on the concentration of pharmaceuticals and musk fra-
grances on ground- and soil water (Ternes et al., 2007).
Most of the top-cited articles deal with microbial risks and
risks caused by heavy metal contamination in the context

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Irrig. and Drain. (2016)
 BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF RESEARCH ON WASTEWATER IRRIGATION (1991–2014)

Table IV. Ten top-cited publications on wastewater irrigation 1991–2014. TC = total citations

Rank Citation information TC 1991-2014

1 Beuchat LR, Ryu JH. 1997. Produce handling and processing 276
practices. Emerging Infectious Diseases 3 (4): 459–465.
2 Khan S, Cao Q, Zheng YM, Huang YZ, Zhu YG. 2008. Health 210
risks of heavy metals in contaminated soils and food crops
irrigated with wastewater in Beijing, China. Environmental
Pollution 152 (3): 686–692.
3 Hopkins RJ, Vial PA, Ferreccio C, Ovalle J, Prado P, 191
Sotomayor V, Russell RG, Wasserman SS, Morris JG. 1993.
Seroprevalence of Heliobacter-Pylori in Chile—vegetables may
serve as one route of transmission. Journal of Infectious
Diseases 168 (1): 222–226.
4 Pereira LS, Oweis T, Zairi A. 2002. Irrigation management under 181
water scarcity. Agricultural Water Management 57 (3): 175–206.
5 Rattan RK, Datta SP, Chhonkar PK, Suribabu K, Singh AK. 2005. 172
Long-term impact of irrigation with sewage effluents on heavy
metal content in soils, crops and groundwater—a case study.
Agricultural Ecosystems & Environment 109 (3–4): 310–322.
6 Sharma,RK, Agrawal M, Marshall F. 2007. Heavy metal 171
contamination of soil and vegetables in suburban areas of Varanasi,
India. Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety 66 (2): 258–266.
7 Angelakis AN, Do Monte MHFM, Bontoux L, Asano T. 1999. 168
The status of wastewater reuse practice in the Mediterranean basin:
need for guidelines. Water Research 33 (10): 2201–2217.
8 Ternes TA, Bonerz M, Herrmann N, Teiser B, Andersen HR. 2007. 152
Irrigation of treated wastewater in Braunschweig, Germany: an
option to remove pharmaceuticals and musk fragrances.
Chemosphere 66 (5): 894–904.
9 Mapanda F, Mangwayana EN, Nyamangara J, Giller KE. 2005. 145
The effect of long-term irrigation using wastewater on heavy metal
contents of soils under vegetables in Harare, Zimbabwe. Agriculture
Ecosystems & Environment 107 (2–3): 151–165.
10 Toze S. 2006. Reuse of effluent water—benefits and risks. 141
Agricultural Water Management 80 (1–3): 147–159.

of wastewater irrigation. This proves that wastewater irriga-
tion is an important alternative facing water scarcity, but
bears a broad range of risks that have to be considered. Khan
and Ho (2012) carried out an analysis of the top-cited
articles in environmental sciences and concluded that this
analysis is not a direct evaluation of the impact of any
certain study, but rather should be regarded as a ’marker
of its recognition within the scientific community’.
CONCLUSION
From the bibliometric analysis of 5699 publications, re-
search trends, hot topics and important regions for various
aspects of wastewater irrigation research were obtained.
Most articles were published in English, with the highest
publication numbers coming from the USA, PR China,
India, Israel, Spain and Australia. It was revealed that most
publications were from countries with large areas irrigated
with wastewater and with major pressure to overcome
problems induced by wastewater irrigation. In recent years,
there has been an increase in publications regarding the
negative aspects of wastewater irrigation such as chemical
or microbial pollution or health risks rather than the agricul-
tural aspects of fertilization. Research trends showed that
micropollutants have great potential to become a hot topic
in the future of wastewater irrigation research. Otherwise,
’classic’ pollutants such as heavy metals are still of great
importance, particularly in emerging countries.
For some research topics and some countries, biblio-
metric analysis revealed fluctuations in research output due
to apparent discontinuity. Most probably, the main reasons
for this research discontinuity lie in the short-period funding
of research projects and thus a lack of long-term, continuing
studies and of sustainable integration of wastewater irriga-
tion research into agricultural and wastewater management
concepts. These problems should be addressed in the future.
Furthermore, international research on wastewater irrigation
would benefit from expanding the scientific exchange on
this topic, in particular between emerging and industrial

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Irrig. and Drain. (2016)
 S. MAASSEN
countries, between the agricultural and wastewater scientific
community as well as between stakeholders and scientists.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This study was funded by the German Ministry of Education
and Science (BMBF) (grant number 033L025A).
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