b i o m a s s a n d b i o e n e r g y 4 7 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 5 0 4 e5 1 5

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

http://www.elsevier.com/locate/biombioe

Review

The scientometric evaluation of the research on the

production of bioenergy from biomass

Ozcan Konur*
Sirnak University, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, TR-73000, Sirnak, Turkey

article info abstract

Article history: The present study explores the characteristics of the literature on the production of bio-
Received 29 January 2011 energy from biomass published during the last three decades, based on the databases of
Received in revised form Science Citation Index-Expanded (SCIE) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and its
25 December 2011 implications using the scientometric techniques. The results of this study reveal that the
Accepted 17 September 2012 research output in this field has grown exponentially during this period reaching to 5892
Available online 23 October 2012 papers in total with paralleling enormous changes in the research landscape. Papers are
mostly journal articles, reviews, and proceedings, being predominantly in English. The US
Keywords: is the most publishing single country producing 27% of the output, but lagging significantly
Biomass behind the Europe as a whole (near 50%). The “Chinese Academy of Sciences” is the most
Bioenergy contributing institution where the most publishing author is “A Demirbas”. “Biomass &
Research evaluation Bioenergy” is the most publishing journal whilst, “Energy & Fuels” is the most published
SCIE subject area. The total number of citations is 82,732, giving a ratio for the “Average Cita-
Scientometrics tions per Item” as 13.83 and “H-index” as 102. The results of this first-ever such study of its
SSCI kind show that the scientometric analysis has a great potential to gain valuable insights
into the evolution of the research on the production of bioenergy from biomass.
ª 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
1.1. The importance of the research on the production of
bioenergy from biomass
The production of bioenergy from biomass has been an
important public policy issue [e.g., [1e6]].
Bridgwater and Peacock [4] reviewed fast pyrolysis
processes for biomass focusing on the key features of fast
pyrolysis and the resultant liquid product and described the
major reaction systems and processes that have been devel-
oped over the last 20 years.
Mohan et al. [7] critically reviewed the issues relating to the
pyrolysis of wood biomass for biooil. They discussed the effect
of the wood composition and structure, heating rate, and
residence time during pyrolysis on the overall reaction rate
and the yield of the volatiles. They found that although very
fast and slow pyrolyses of biomass produced markedly
different products, the variety of heating rates, temperatures,
residence times, and feedstock varieties found in the litera-
ture made generalizations difficult to define.

Abbreviations: SSCI, Social Sciences Citation Index; SCIE, Science Citation Index-Expanded.
* Tel.: þ90 486 216 82 42; fax: þ90 486 216 32 85.
E-mail address: okonur@hotmail.com.
URL: http://www.okonur.info.
0961-9534/$ e see front matter ª 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biombioe.2012.09.047
 b i o m a s s a n d b i o e n e r g y 4 7 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 5 0 4 e5 1 5
McKendry [8] reviewed the issues relating to the produc-
tion of bioenergy from biomass with a focus on the biomass
production and plant properties.
1.2. The importance of the scientometric research
There has been a significant interest in the research
community in general to evaluate the research activities
through the use of the scientometric methods in recent years.
Hence, the importance of the scientometric research
regarding the evaluation of the research activities in a certain
topical field has also been highlighted by a number of selected
papers from various fields as briefly outlined below.
Carbonell et al. [9] carried out a scientometric analysis of
the literature on Internet, video games, and cell phone
addiction. The most published years were 2004 and 2005. The
most productive countries were the US, China, the UK,
Taiwan, and South Korea. The most used language was
English (65.4%), followed by Chinese (12.8%), and Spanish
(4.5%). Articles were published in 96 different journals and the
most publishing journal was “Cyberpsychology & Behavior”.
Addiction to the Internet was the most studied subject, fol-
lowed by addiction to video games and cell phones. The lack of
the universal terminology in the abstracts increased the noise
in the retrieved literature.
Huang [10] carried out a scientometric analysis of
obstructive sleep apnea research trends using the keywords of
“obstructive sleep apnea”, “obstructive apnea”, or “OSA”. The
annual number of articles in this area grew from approxi-
mately 200 in 1991 to 650 in 2006. The main subject categories
were the respiratory system and clinical neurology, each of
which accounted for more than 10% of total articles. Most of
the research was conducted in the major industrial countries.
Konur [11] scientometrically evaluated the research on the
production of the bioenergy from algae. The literature on the
algae and bioenergy has grown exponentially during this
period with 717 papers in total. Most of documents were in the
form of journal articles, reviews, and proceedings and English
was the predominant language (97.6%). USA, China, Germany,
and England were the four biggest contributing countries. The
“Chinese Academy of Sciences” was the largest institutional
contributor and “Bioresource Technology” was the most
publishing journal whilst “Biotechnology & Applied Microbi-
ology” was the most published subject area. The total number
of citations was 11,079, giving a ratio for the “Average Cita-
tions per Item” as 15.45 and “H-index” as 52.
Mache et al. [12] carried out a scientometric evaluation of
the research on Alzheimer’s disease. They found that 50,030
publications were published between 1985 and 2008.
Approximately 97% of the articles were written in English,
whilst the USA was the most prolific country during that
period, followed by Germany and France.
Shadgan et al. [13] identified the 100 top-cited articles in
rehabilitation journals investigating the quality and evolution
of rehabilitation research. These 100 top-cited articles had an
average of 200 citations per article. They were allin English-
language, primarily from North America and published in 11
journals led by the “Archives of Physical Medicine” and
“Rehabilitation”. Neurorehabilitation (41%), disability (19%),
and biomechanics (18%) were the most common fields of
505
study. Methodological observational studies performed in
North America had the highest citations in rehabilitation
journals.
Vitzthum et al. [14] carried out a scientometric analysis of
the topic “cruciate ligament”. In the period 1903e2007, 9806
published items were indexed in the Web of Knowledge
databases referring to this topic. The publications were pub-
lished by 59 countries showing the USA, Germany, and the UK
as the most publishing ones. The “American Journal of Sports
Medicine” was the most publishing journal and “Woo, SLY”
was the most publishing author.
1.3. Issues
Despite the increasing public policy importance of the
research on the production of bioenergy from biomass as well
as the scientometric research, separately, there has been no
published full-scientometric study of research on the
production of bioenergy from biomass in the scientific
community as of January 2011.
However, there were two related studies in this area. In the
first study, Kajikawa & Takeda [15] carried out a citation
network analysis study on the structure of research on
biomass and biofuels. They found that biodiesel and hydrogen
production were the most rapidly developing domains.
Research on lignocellulosic feedstock was a typical case where
knowledge from other scientific disciplines such as Biotech-
nology and Bioengineering would be required.
In the second study, Thomas [16] evaluated scientific
productivity of the research groups working in the area of
plant biomass using a sample of 8 countries outside the US
and European Union in an early study. It was found that both
scientometric approach and the peer review approach were
not successful for this purpose.
Therefore, the aim of this paper is to carry out a full-
scientometric evaluation of the research on the production
of bioenergy from biomass published and indexed by the SCIE
and SSCI during the last three decades to identify the main
trends and issues in this field, as the first ever study of its kind,
complementing other research evaluation techniques such as
literature reviews [17], meta-analyses [18], and content anal-
yses [19].
With more analytical information in this field, all the
stakeholders would benefit contributing more effectively to
the production of bioenergy from biomass following the
teaching of the “New Institutional Theory”: “in order to
understand decision-making under conditions of strong
uncertainty we must understand the relationship between the
mental models that individuals construct to make sense of the
world around them, the ideologies that evolve from such
constructions, and the institutions that develop in a society to
order interpersonal relationships” [20].
The “institutions are composed of formal rules, informal
constraints, and characteristics of enforcing those
constraints. While formal rules can be changed over night by
the polity, informal constraints change very slowly. Both are
ultimately shaped by people’s subjective perceptions of the
world around them; those perceptions, in turn, determine
explicit choices among formal rules and evolving informal
constraints” [21,22].
506 b i o m a s s a n d b i o e n e r g y 4 7 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 5 0 4 e5 1 5
“If institutions are the rules of the game, organizations are
the players; and it is the interaction between them that is key
to institutional change. Furthermore, the choices players
make are constrained by their mental models, built to deal
with complex and limited information, and by the economies
of scope, complementarities, and network externalities of the
institutional matrix. The resulting bias in favor of choices
consistent with the existing framework determines that
institutional change is overwhelmingly incremental and path-
dependent” [23,24].
2. Material and methods
The traditional methods of scientometric research as applied
in many scientific fields were applied in this study.
A search was carried out in the Science Citation Index-
Expanded (SCIE) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI)
using the Web of Knowledge database (v.4.10-Web of Science)
of the Thomson Reuters Inc., in December 2010 as in [9e16].
These indices have established themselves as the gold
standard for the retrieval of the scientific information;
becoming preferred indices for the scientometric analysis [25].
For example, Bar-Ilan [26] examined three citation databases
(Google-Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science) through the
citations of the book “Introduction to informetrics” by Leo
Egghe and Ronald Rousseau. Scopus citations were compa-
rable to Web of Science citations when limiting the citation
period to 1996 and onwards. Google Scholar missed about 30%
of the citations covered by Scopus and Web of Science, but
there were citations located by Google Scholar were not
covered either by Scopus or by Web of Science.
Two sets of search terms used for this study. The search
terms for the biomass were: “biomass” in the title. The search
terms for the bio-energy were: (biofuel* or “bio-fuel*” or fuel*
or bioenergy or “bio-energy” or energy or biomethan* or “bio-
methan*” or methan* or bioethanol* or “bio-ethanol*” or
ethanol* or biodiesel* or “biodiesel*” or diesel* or biogas* or
“bio-gas*” or gas or biooil* or “bio-oil*” or oil* or biohydrogen*
or hydrogen* or synfuel* or syngas* or synoil* or “syn-gas” or
“syn-fuel*” or “syn-oil*” or “renewable energy” or “green
energy” or “biorefin*” or “bio-refin*” or refinery) in the topic.
These search terms were found from the abstracts of the
relevant papers to ensure that all the relevant papers were
located. As Carbonell et al. [9] found, preventing too much noise
in the research sample has been an important issue at this
stage of the research. These results show that too much noise
has been prevented with the careful selection of the keywords
for the search. For example, when the search term “biomass”
was searched in the topic rather than in the title only, the
number of references found was over 30,000. As the Kajikawa &
Takeda [15] have shown, the subjects of these papers have been
wider in relation to the production of bioenergy from biomass.
However, some highly cited papers (e.g. [27]) were not located
with our search strategy since these papers did not include the
search term “biomass” in their title. Therefore, it is clear that
this piece of study is sensitive to the use of these keywords in
the abstracts pages or titles of the papers.
The search was refined restricting the research to “article”,
“review” and “proceedings papers”.
It should be further noted that the results of this piece of
study are also sensitive to the differences in institutional
subscriptions to the Web of Knowledge as noted in [28]. For
this reason, a sufficient description of the specific databases
was made to enable greater reliability in the scientometric
evaluation of the institutions, countries, and researchers.
Next, a scientometric analysis was carried out as a first step
using the “analyze the results” tool of the Web of Knowledge
database. The used tools were “author”, “country”, “document
type”, “institution name”, “language”, “publication year”,
“source title”, and “subject area”.
As a second step of the scientometric analysis, a citation
analysis was carried out using the “create citation report” tool
of the Web of Knowledge database. The information relating
to the “sum of the times cited”, “average citations per item”,
and “h-index” was noted down.
Additionally, the references of the first 20 most cited
papers were recorded and their references were listed in the
references. A further study was carried out on the hottest
papers, published between 2008 and 2010 as well.
As a third step of the scientometric analysis, the papers
citing the papers on the production of bioenergy from biomass
were viewed and analyzed using the tool “analyze the results”.
The analysis of these cited papers was carried out as in the
first step and the relevant information was recorded. The
information obtained through this process was used to
measure the impact of the original research found in the first
step. However, the results of the analysis were given only in
an outline form in the paper.
3. Results
3.1. Document type
Using the keywords for biomass and bioenergy, 6474 refer-
ences were found in total for the entire search period from
1980 to 2010. 173 and 6438 of these papers were indexed by the
SSCI and SCIE, respectively. The sheer size of the sample
suggests that this area has been of high public importance.
76.3% of the references were articles followed by proceed-
ings papers (11.3%), and reviews (4.8%) where articles,
reviews, and proceedings papers formed altogether 92.4% of
the sample.
It is notable that the main communication mode is the
articles. It is also interesting to note that the number of
reviews is relatively high, indicating the importance of the
communications in the form of reviews to inform the
numerous academic disciplines about the current research
findings in the field.
These reviews could meet a substantial demand for the
state-of-the-art knowledge in this field. These reviews are the
most basic tenets of the research on the production of bio-
energy from biomass as argued in other contexts in [29] and
conducting a literature review is a vital part of any piece of
research [17].
The search was refined restricting the search to only arti-
cles, reviews, and proceedings papers, resulting in 5982
papers. This formed the sample for the paper. 146 and 5953 of
these papers were indexed by the SSCI and SCIE, respectively.
 b i o m a s s a n d b i o e n e r g y 4 7 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 5 0 4 e5 1 5 507

In the research assessment of the researchers, institutions
and countries; articles, reviews, and proceedings papers have
been considered as the core group [30]. Therefore, this core
group of papers was selected for the sample of the study.
3.2. The most publishing authors
Based on the sample of 5982 papers, an exercise was carried
out to determine the most publishing 20 authors in the area of
biomass and bioenergy. As shown in Table 1, these authors
published between 17 and 75 papers. This finding suggests
that the research in this area has been diffused with many
authors distributed globally as all of these most publishing
authors contributed to only 8.0% of the sample.
The most publishing authors were “Demirbas, A” (75
papers) working on the production of bioenergy from biomass
and the related policy issues, followed by “Spliethoff, H” (29
papers), “Corella, J” (28 papers), “Bridgwater, AV” (27 papers),
and “Li, CZ” (27 papers) all working on the production of bio-
energy from biomass.
The research on the most publishing authors has been
considered an important aspect of the scientometric research,
as the results of such study enable us to locate those
researchers who are most likely to influence the field of the
study [31,32].
Indeed, these results of this strand of the study show that
the groups of researchers from Turkey, Europe, the US, Japan,
and India had been the most prolific researchers influencing
the field of research in the core areas production of bioenergy
from biomass.
Table 1 also contains information on the number of
papers, average citation value, and H-index as found from
the citation tool of the Web of Knowledge database, con-
cerning all the papers published in the areas of biomass by
these authors.
The H-index is a recent metric that captures a researcher’s
influence within the relevant literature as these data alto-
gether give valuable data on the seniority of these most
publishing authors [33]. For example, “Demirbas, A” had 195
papers published in the area of biomass and bioenergy with 17
citations per paper on average and H-index of 28, suggesting
that he has been a senior researcher working in relevant
fields.
Thus, it is clear that these listed prolific authors on average
make more impact than non-prolific authors as noted for the
field of laser science and technology in [34].
3.3. The most publishing countries
An exercise was carried out to determine the most publishing
20 countries. Table 2 shows that the most publishing single
country on the production of bioenergy from biomass was the
US with 1621 papers, comprising only 27.1% of the sample.
The next most publishing four countries were China (6.6%),
Germany (6.4%), Japan (6.2%), and England (6.0%). However,
the researchers from the European Union within this sample
presented in the Table, as a whole published 2686 papers
comprising 44.9% of the sample.
This suggests that the European Union provides significant
incentives for the research community in this area,
surpassing significantly the US in this field confirming the
findings of the relevant research [35]. The EU and the US
together accounted for 72% of the sample as two major players
in this field of research.

Table 1 e The most publishing authors.

Authors Institutiona Paper Paper No of Av. H-index
numbers numbers (%) papers Citation

1 Demirbas, A Sirnak Univ Turkey 75 1.3 195 17 28

2 Spliethoff, H Tech Univ Munich Germany 29 0.5 40 12 13
3 Corella, J Univ Complutense Madrid Spain 28 0.5 35 47 24
4 Bridgwater, AV Univ Aston UK 27 0.5 51 38 19
5 Li, CZ Curtin Univ Technol Australia 27 0.5 52 13 18
6 Dumesic, JA Univ Wisconsin US 23 0.4 46 48 21
7 Wu, CZ Nanjing Univ Technol China 23 0.4 38 10 11
8 Andreae, MO Max Planck Inst Chem Germany 22 0.4 106 44 36
9 Hall, DO Kings Coll London UK 22 0.4 35 16 14
10 Tomishige, K Tohoku Univ Japan 21 0.4 39 21 17
11 Hao, WM US Forest Serv US 20 0.3 38 40 22
12 Kunimori, K Univ Tsukaba Japan 20 0.3 32 24 16
13 Bhattacharya, SC Phys Res Lab India 19 0.3 30 9 11
14 Ward, DE Danisco Co US 19 0.3 38 61 27
15 Blake, DR Univ Calif Irvine US 18 0.3 99 41 40
16 Kakaras, E Nat Tech Univ Athens Greece 18 0.3 29 11 11
17 Aznar, MP Univ Saragossa Spain 17 0.3 19 54 15
18 Hupa, M Abo Akad Finland 17 0.3 36 11 12
19 Jenkins, BM Univ Calif Davis US 17 0.3 45 43 14
20 Jurado, F Univ Jaen Spain 17 0.3 18 6 7
Total 8.0

a The latest institution cited in the abstract pages of the papers.

508 b i o m a s s a n d b i o e n e r g y 4 7 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 5 0 4 e5 1 5

Table 2 e The most publishing countries. Table 3 e The most publishing research institutions.
Country Paper Paper Research institutions Paper Paper
numbers numbers (%) numbers numbers (%)

European Union 2686 44.9 1 Chinese Acad Sci China 101 1.7
1 USA 1621 27.1 2 Natl Renewable Energy Lab US 91 1.5
2 Peoples R China 393 6.6 3 US Forest Serv US 69 1.2
3 Germany 382 6.4 4 Texas A&M Univ US 58 1.0
4 Japan 372 6.2 5 Univ Wisconsin US 58 1.0
5 England 357 6.0 6 Oak Ridge Natl Lab US 50 0.8
6 Spain 302 5.0 7 Univ Utrecht Netherlands 50 0.8
7 India 298 5.0 8 Oregon State Univ US 47 0.8
8 Canada 282 4.7 9 Delft Univ Technol Netherlands 46 0.8
9 Netherlands 268 4.5 10 Indian Inst Technol India 46 0.8
10 Sweden 261 4.4 11 Univ Leeds UK 45 0.8
11 Turkey 240 4.0 12 Swedish Univ Agr Sci Sweden 43 0.7
12 France 196 3.3 13 Univ Calif Davis US 42 0.7
13 Italy 196 3.3 14 NASA US 41 0.7
14 Australia 170 2.8 15 Univ Florida US 41 0.7
15 Brazil 147 2.5 16 Tech Univ Denmark. Denmark 40 0.7
16 Finland 133 2.2 17 USDA ARS US 40 0.7
17 Greece 108 1.8 18 Natl Tech Univ Athens Greece 39 0.7
18 Austria 101 1.7 19 Univ Minnesota US 39 0.7
19 Denmark 89 1.5 20 Univ Sao Paulo Brazil 39 0.7
20 Poland 69 1.2 1025 17.2
5985

their resources in the short run and getting additional

The presence of China at the top in this list is hardly
surprising as China invests in academic infrastructure to
strive for excellence [36].
Considering the findings that the high-income countries
published 89.2% of original articles in anaesthesia [37], results
from this study confirm these findings in this field as well since
the US and the Europe published together 72% of the sample.
This study also confirms that there was decline in the US
share in this field, confirming the hypothesis that the share of
the US in the global research in general had declined [38].
3.4. The most publishing institutions
Table 3 shows the most publishing 20 research institutions
across the world doing research on the production of bio-
energy from biomass, comprising 17.2% of the whole sample.
It is found that the “Chinese Academy of Sciences” was the
most publishing institution (1.7% of the sample), followed by
the “National Renewable Energy Laboratory” of the US (1.5%),
“US Forestry Service” (1.2%), the “Texas A & M University”
(1.0%), and “University of Wisconsin” (1.0%). It is notable that
all top five institutions are from the US with the exception of
top number one.
It is also notable that 12 institutions are from the US
showing the dominance of the US institutions in this field,
supporting earlier findings on the most publishing authors
and most publishing countries. These results suggest the
research by the most prolific institutions in this area has been
well diffused with many research centers distributed nation-
ally within and outside the US.
It seems that these most publishing institutions have
positioned themselves as a major player in the field of the
production of bioenergy from biomass by making best use of
resources in the long run in the innovative fields of research
such as this field [39].
The most publishing institution analysis provides valuable
information on the comparative contribution of institutions
and reflects the public emphasis on the ranking of the insti-
tutions by in-part scientometric methods [40].
3.5. The language of communication
The main type of communication was English, comprising
96.5% of the sample and German formed 0.95% of the sample.
This is a very surprising result showing again the dominance
of US institutions and researchers in this field.
It is interesting to note that most of the papers were pub-
lished by the English speaking authors, but the other authors
as well published in English language journals since English
was the preferred mode of scientific communication in this
field [41].
3.6. Historical development of the research
The distribution of the papers by the publication year is shown
in Table 4. It is notable that the number of publications
increased nearly four times in the 1990s in relation to the
1980s increasing from 5.6% to 21.2% of the sample. The
number of publications increased three times in the 2000s in
relation to the 1990s comprising 60.4% of the sample.
The number of publications became steady in the 2000s as
the number of publications ranged from 176 in 2001 to 765 in
2009. Similarly, they ranged from 49 in 1990 to 190 in 1999 in
the 1990s; and from 25 in 1982 to 49 in 1983 in the 1980s.
The publication year analysis showed that the number
of papers increased in recent years. This finding is hardly
 b i o m a s s a n d b i o e n e r g y 4 7 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 5 0 4 e5 1 5 509

Table 4 e The distribution of the papers by the Table 5 e The most publishing journals.
publication year.
Journal title Paper Paper
Publication Paper Paper numbers numbers (%)
year numbers numbers (%)
1 Biomass & Bioenergy 469 8.0
1 2000e2009 3557 60.4 2 Energy & Fuels 283 4.8
2 1990e1999 1248 21.2 3 Fuel 206 3.5
3 1980e1989 330 5.6 4 Bioresource Technology 195 3.3
4 2011 21 0.4 5 Industrial & Engineering 120 2.0
5 2010 821 13.9 Chemistry Research
6 2009 765 13.0 6 Journal of Geophysical 105 1.8
7 2008 567 9.6 Research-Atmospheres
8 2007 443 7.5 7 Applied Biochemistry 100 1.7
9 2006 383 6.5 and Biotechnology
10 2005 309 5.2 8 Fuel Processing Technology 94 1.6
11 2004 266 4.5 9 International Journal of 91 1.5
12 2003 253 4.3 Hydrogen Energy
13 2002 205 3.5 10 Energy Conversion and 89 1.5
14 2001 176 3.0 Management
15 2000 190 3.2 11 Renewable Energy 84 1.4
16 1999 190 3.2 12 Biotechnology and 72 1.2
17 1998 163 2.8 Bioengineering
18 1997 143 2.4 13 Energy 70 1.2
19 1996 160 2.7 14 Energy Sources 64 1.1
20 1995 123 2.1 15 Energy Policy 60 1.0
21 1994 129 2.2 16 Journal of Analytical and 57 1.0
22 1993 116 2.0 Applied Pyrolysis
23 1992 88 1.5 17 Energy Sources Part 54 0.9
24 1991 87 1.5 A-Recovery Utilization
25 1990 49 0.8 and Environmental Effects
26 1989 34 0.6 18 Renewable & Sustainable 50 0.8
27 1988 28 0.5 Energy Reviews
28 1987 30 0.5 19 Biomass 44 0.7
29 1986 30 0.5 20 Environmental Science 43 0.7
30 1985 32 0.5 & Technology
31 1984 37 0.6 2450 39.8
32 1983 49 0.8
33 1982 25 0.4
34 1981 34 0.6
35 1980 31 0.5
36 1979 5 0.1 for excellence for publication outlets and the high impact jour-
nals highly value this field as an emerging societal field [42].
For example, the first specialist leading journal, “Biomass &
Bioenergy” published 2085 articles, proceedings papers, and
surprising as there has been strong policy and financial incen- reviews during the last three decades with 25,832 total cita-
tives for the research regarding the production of bioenergy tions and an average rate of citation of 12,39 and with an H-
from biomass in the face of the fossil-based fuel shortage and Index of 59. This means that on average a paper published by
the increasing energy insecurity worldwide [e.g., [1e6]]. this Journal was cited more than 12 times. Similarly, the value
of the H-Index is very high.
The second specialist leading journal, “Energy & Fuels”
3.7. The most publishing journals published 6475 articles, proceedings papers, and reviews
during the last three decades with 66,815 total citations and an
The most publishing 20 journals publishing between 43 and average rate of citation of 10.3 and with an H-Index of 76. This
469 papers on production of bioenergy from biomass were means that on average a paper published by this Journal was
listed in Table 5. “Biomass & Bioenergy” was the most cited 10.3 times. The value of the H-Index is again very high.
publishing journal with 469 published papers contributing to The third leading journal, “Fuel” published 8163 articles,
8.0% of the sample; followed by “Energy & Fuels” (283 papers), proceedings papers, and reviews with 102,832 total citations
“Fuel” (206 papers), “Bioresource Technology” (195 papers), and an average rate of citation of 12,6 and with an H-Index of
and “Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research” (120 80. This means that on average a paper published by this
papers). These 5 top journals constituted 21.6% of the whole Journal was cited nearly 13 times. The value of the H-Index is
sample and these most publishing 20 journals as a whole again very high.
contributed to the 39.8% of the sample. These findings suggest that the research in this area have
Most of these journals have relatively high journal impact been well diffused on the journals basis except five top jour-
factors as calculated by the Journal Citation Report, suggesting nals. The other interesting finding from the examination of
that papers on the production of bioenergy from biomass strive this list is that these journals are in the subject areas most
510 b i o m a s s a n d b i o e n e r g y 4 7 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 5 0 4 e5 1 5

related to the energy and fuels. This suggests that policy- the interdisciplinary nature ranging from “Energy & Fuels”, to
makers have provided significant incentives in the applied “Agricultural Engineering”, and “Ecology” following a similar
engineering fields as well in addition to basic natural sciences pattern in biofuels research [11].
especially in recent years and the research in this area is on Like most many technical fields, 99.6% of the papers were
the stage of the application of the basic scientific findings indexed in SCIE, highlighting the natural and applied sciences
relating to the production of bioenergy from biomass. dimension of the research on the production of bioenergy
from biomass whereas only 2.4% of the papers were indexed
by the SSCI.
3.8. The most publishing ISI subject areas
3.9. Citation analysis
Table 6 shows the subject area of the journals publishing
papers on the production of bioenergy from biomass. “Energy
“Citations are not a reliable indicator of scientific contribution
& Fuels” was the area where 37.8% of the sample was pub-
at the level of the individual article. In the construction of
lished. This was followed by “Engineering, Chemical” (24.2%),
relative citation indicators, the average citation rate of the
“Biotechnology & Applied Microbiology” (21.8%), “Environ-
subfield appears to be slightly more appropriate as a reference
mental Sciences” (13.6%), and “Agricultural Engineering”
standard than the journal citation rate” [45].
(12.2%).
The results from the use of the “citation” tool of the Web of
The decomposition of scientific literature into disciplinary
Knowledge database based on the 5982 paper references show
and sub-disciplinary structures is one of the core goals of
that the brute total number of citations was 82,732, giving
scientometrics [43]. The Web of Knowledge subject categories
a ratio for the “Average Citations per Item” as 13.83 and “H-
classify journals indexed in the SCIE and SSCI. The aggregated
index” as 102.
journalejournal citation matrix contained in the Journal
These data suggest that this research field as a whole has
Citation Reports can be aggregated on the basis of these
had a relatively high impact factor in terms of the H-index and
categories.
“Average Citations per Item”. On average, a paper published in
It is notable that the most top publishing subject areas,
this field was cited nearly 14 times. There are significant
such as “Energy & Fuels” “Engineering, Chemical”, “Biotech-
variances across the scientific fields regarding their citation
nology & Applied Microbiology”, and “Environmental
impact and the H-index for this field is sufficiently high
Sciences” fall within the realm of the applied engineering
considering the indices for other fields.
sciences rather than the basic natural sciences, supporting
The difference of the impact of the papers on the produc-
a similar finding relating to the most publishing journals [44].
tion of bioenergy from biomass can also be seen within the
Another important finding from this table is that the
sample as papers indexed in SSCI have had lower impact in
research on the production of bioenergy from biomass was of
terms of both the “Average Citations per Item” (6.99) and H-
Index (16), compared to the SCIE-indexed papers (13.87 and
102, respectively). The citation data provided above on the
Table 6 e The subject area of the journals publishing subject analysis also provide further evidence in this aspect.
papers. These findings suggest that the papers indexed in the SCIE
Subject area Paper Paper on average have higher impact on the literature compared to
numbers numbers (%) those indexed by the SSCI, relevant to production of bioenergy
from biomass as measured by the number of publications
1 Energy & Fuels 2230 37.8
2 Engineering, Chemical 1426 24.2 indexed, the average citation rates, and the H-index.
3 Biotechnology & Applied 1286 21.8 “Citations support the communication of specialist
Microbiology knowledge by allowing authors and readers to make specific
4 Environmental Sciences 803 13.6 selections in several contexts at the same time” [46]. Thus, the
5 Agricultural Engineering 717 12.2 citation analysis, based on the citations made by the authors
6 Engineering, Environmental 306 5.2
provides valuable information on the scientific impact of the
7 Chemistry, Physical 286 4.9
8 Thermodynamics 275 4.7
research on the production of bioenergy from biomass as
9 Agronomy 254 4.3 briefly outlined above.
10 Ecology 241 4.1
11 Meteorology & Atmospheric 239 4.1 3.10. The most cited papers
Sciences
12 Chemistry, Multidisciplinary 223 3.8
The most cited 20 papers were determined through the same
13 Chemistry, Applied 195 3.3
citation tool and the citation details were given in Table 7 in
14 Forestry 192 3.3
15 Plant Sciences 173 2.9 the decreasing order of the “total number of citations”. These
16 Marine & Freshwater Biology 153 2.6 researchers are the “scientific elite” in this field as coined
17 Biochemistry & Molecular 152 2.6 by [47].
Biology Ref. [1] on the pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass was
18 Chemistry, Analytical 130 2.2 the most cited paper with 640 citations resulting in 75 total
19 Soil Science 127 2.2
average citations per year. This paper was followed by [48]
20 Engineering, Mechanical 116 2.0
with 608 citations on the synthesis of transportation fuels
9514 161.6
from biomass [6], with 406 citations on the hydrogen
 b i o m a s s a n d b i o e n e r g y 4 7 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 5 0 4 e5 1 5 511

Table 7 e The most cited papers.

Paper Affiliation Topics Document Total no of Total average
reference type Citationsa citations
per year

1 [1] Purdue Univ US Pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass Review 640 93

2 [48] Univ Massachusetts US Synthesis of transportation fuels Review 608 101
from biomass
3 [6] Univ Wisconsin US Hydrogen from catalytic reforming of Article 406 41
biomass-derived hydrocarbons
4 [7] Mississippi State Pyrolysis of wood/biomass for bio-oil Review 388 65
Univ US
5 [5] Univ Politecn Valencia Transformation of biomass into Review 380 76
Spain chemicals
6 [52] Dartmouth Coll US Fuel ethanol from cellulosic biomass Article 340 16
7 [53] Univ Minnesota US Biofuels from low-input high-diversity Article 334 56
grassland biomass
8 [54] Univ Calif Davis US Combustion properties of biomass Proceedings 301 22
Paper
9 [8] Appl Environm Res Ctr Energy production from biomass Review 301 30
Ltd. England
10 [55] Univ Wisconsin US Hydrogen production from biomass- Article 297 33
derived hydrocarbons
11 [3] Aston Univ England Renewable fuels and chemicals by Proceedings 270 30
thermal processing of biomass Paper
12 [56] Natl Bioenergy Ctr Applications of biomass fast Article 270 34
NREL US pyrolysis oil
13 [57] Darmouth Coll US Development of leading biomass Article 261 38
pretreatment technologies
14 [58] McGill Univ Canada Heavy metal biosorption by the dry Article 243 15
biomass of Sargassum fluitans
15 [59] Univ Limerick Ireland Catalysts for biomass gasification Review 239 22
16 [4] Aston Univ England Fast pyrolysis processes for biomass Review 234 20
17 [2] Aston Univ England Technical and economic-feasibility Review 233 14
of biomass gasification for power-
generation
18 [60] Aston Univ England Pyrolysis of biomass Article 225 17
19 [61] Univ Wisconsin US Catalytic processing of biomass- Review 215 43
derived oxygenated hydrocarbons
20 [62] Sila Science Turkey Biomass conversion processing for Article 214 20
fuels and chemicals

a Citation values are of June 2011.

production from catalytic reforming of biomass-derived
hydrocarbons [7], with 388 citations on the pyrolysis of
wood/biomass for biooil, and [5] with 380 citations on the
transformation of biomass into chemicals.
It is interesting to note that these 20 most cited papers deal
with the issues relating to the production of bioenergy from
biomass with a focus on the lignocellulosic biomass.
It is further interesting to note that these top most cited
papers were published in relatively high impact journals and
originates from a North American or British ‘ivory tower’ as
noted in [49] for the citation classics in “General Surgery”: 18
papers from the US, Canada, and the UK with other papers
from Spain and Turkey.
Similar findings were found regarding citation classics in
“Orthopaedic Surgery”: they originated from the US followed
by the Britain and were published in seven high impact
specific orthopaedic journals [50].
As noted in [51] for the SARS research, “a chronically weak
area in research papers, reports, and reviews is the complete
identification of important background reference documents
that formed the building blocks for the research”. This section
on the most-cited papers remedies this weakness in the field
of the production of bioenergy from biomass and helps in
locating important background reference documents that
formed building blocks for the research in this area. Indeed,
this approach has been helpful in this aspect.
The examination of the most cited papers shows that they
are more applied engineering sciences oriented rather than
basic natural sciences providing further evidence that the
research in this area has reached the stage of application in
recent years.
3.11. The hottest papers
It would be interesting to have a brief look into the most cited
papers published between 2008 and 2010 as a further study to
highlight the hottest papers, as the data on the hot papers
were regarded one of the important research performance
indicators in addition to the data on the most cited papers [63].
512 b i o m a s s a n d b i o e n e r g y 4 7 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 5 0 4 e5 1 5

Table 8 e The recent hottest papers.

Paper Affiliation Topics Document Total no of Total average
reference type Citationsa citations
per year

1 [64] Univ Wageningen Pretreatments to enhance the digestibility Review 163 41

Netherlands of lignocellulosic biomass.
2 [65] Univ Wisconsin US Chemical transformation of lignocellulosic Article 112 37
biomass into furans for fuels and chemicals
3 [66] Los Alamos Natl Lab US Genome sequencing and analysis of the Article 99 25
biomass-degrading fungus
4 [67] Univ Wisconsin US Catalytic conversion of biomass to Article 98 25
hydrocarbons and targeted liquid-fuel classes.
5 [68] Johns Hopkins Univ US Bioconversion of lignocellulosic biomass Review 85 21
6 [69] Univ Calif Davis US Pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass for Review 80 27
efficient hydrolysis and biofuel production
7 [70] Univ Naples Federico Italy Modeling chemical and physical processes Review 72 18
of wood and biomass pyrolysis
8 [71] Carnegie Inst. US Strategic analysis of the production of Review 67 17
biomass energy
9 [72] Joint BioEnergy Inst US Microbial production of fatty-acid-derived Article 67 34
fuels and chemicals from plant biomass
10 [73] Univ Sydney Australia Hydrogen production from biomass Review 66 17
11 [74] Univ Illinois US Conversion solar energy into biomass via Review 61 15
photosynthesis
12 [75] Purdue Univ US Improvement of biomass through lignin Review 60 15
modification
13 [76] Univ Patras Greece Biofuels generation from sweet sorghum Article 57 11
14 [77] Univ Massachusetts US Production of green gasoline by catalytic Article 54 14
fast pyrolysis of solid biomass derived
compounds
15 [78] Univ Politecn Valencia Catalytic conversion of glycerol/water Article 53 13
Spain mixtures into acrolein, reaction network
16 [79] Toyohashi Univ Technol Reduction and control technology of tar Review 53 13
Japan during biomass gasification/pyrolysis
17 [80] Sila Science Turkey Biomass business and production Article 50 25
18 [81] Univ York England Production of liquid biofuels from biomass Review 49 12
19 [82] SINTEF Norway Conversion of lignocellulosic biomass using Proceedings 35 12
porous materials Paper
20 [83] Gaziosmanpasa Univ Biosorption of Pb(II) and Cd(II) from aqueous Article 34 12
Turkey solution using green alga biomass

a Citation values are of June 2011.

For example, Table 8 shows the hottest 20 papers published
in the last three years measured on their total impact on the
development of the literature on the production of bioenergy
from biomass. These researchers are the “scientific elite” in
the making in this field as coined by [47].
Ref. [64] has been the hottest paper with 163 total citations
on the pretreatments to enhance the digestibility of lignocel-
lulosic biomass, followed by [65] on the chemical trans-
formation of lignocellulosic biomass into furans for fuels with
112 citations [66], on the genome sequencing and analysis of
the biomass-degrading fungus with 99 citations [67], on the
catalytic conversion of biomass to hydrocarbons and targeted
liquid-fuel classes with 98 citations, and [68] on the pretreat-
ment of lignocellulosic biomass for efficient hydrolysis and
biofuel production with 85 citations.
More than half of these papers were from North America
and the UK, suggesting the dominance of these countries in
this aspect as well. There were also papers from Australia,
Japan and other European countries.
These data provide valuable information on the hot topics
and the authors and institutions of these papers. “The hot
papers have more authors, more institutions participating in
the research than the non-hot papers” [63]. These findings are
true for the hottest papers in this field with a few exceptions,
although only the institution of the first Authors were given in
the table.
This section on the hottest papers remedies this weakness
in the field of production of bioenergy from biomass in
locating key reference papers published recently and helps in
locating in advance important background reference docu-
ments that would form building blocks for the research on in
this area.
3.12. Analysis of citing papers
As a next step in the citation analysis, the papers citing 5982
references found on the production of bioenergy from
biomass were viewed and it was found that there were
82,732 total citations resulting in 41,385 viewable citations.
These citations were refined to articles, reviews, and
proceedings papers resulting in a final sample with 42,641
citations. This formed the sample for the further analysis.
 b i o m a s s a n d b i o e n e r g y 4 7 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 5 0 4 e5 1 5
This sample is different from the original sample of papers
and is useful to show the citation impact of the papers in
the original sample.
The number of references in this larger sample suggests
that the impact of 5982 papers published in the original
sample has been large with nearly 7 times more papers pub-
lished citing them.
The most publishing author analysis shows that “Demi-
rbas, A” was the most publishing author with 227 papers;
followed by “Andreae, MO” (122 papers), “Blake, DR” (121
papers), “Jacobs, DJ” (97 papers), and “Wang, Y” (96 papers).
A country analysis shows that USA (29.2%), China (9.6%),
Germany (7.4%), England (5.9%), Canada (5.8%), Japan (5.2%),
and Spain (4.9%) were the most publishing seven countries
referencing one of the papers in the original sample.
80.4% of the sample were articles; followed by proceedings
papers (11.0%), and reviews (8.6%).
An institutional analysis shows that “Chinese Academy of
Sciences” (2.3%), NASA (1.5%), “CSIC” (1.0%), and “University of
Wisconsin” (0.9%) were the most publishing institutions. This
institutional ranking differs from the ranking in the Section
3.4 as it refers to the institutions most citing the papers in the
original research sample.
98.3% of these publications were written in English where
Chinese (0.3%) and Portuguese (0.3%) were the other major
languages.
An exponential growth in the number of publications
between 1980 and 2010 was observed in this sample as well
starting with 6 papers in 1980 and reaching to 6514 papers in
2009 with additional 7433 papers in 2010. 65% of the sample
papers were published between 2005 and 2010.
“Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres” (3.0%),
“Bioresource Technology” (2.7%), “Energy & Fuels” (2.1%),
“Biomass & Bioenergy” (2.0%), “Fuel” (1.5%), and “International
Journal of Hydrogen Energy” (2.0%) were the most publishing
journals in this area for this sample. The most publishing 6
journals published nearly 13% of the sample papers.
Following the papers covered in the original sample of 5982
papers, titles of the first 6 journals in this sample suggest
a mixture of applied Engineering Sciences and Basic Natural
Sciences rather than solely basic Natural Sciences
domination.
“Environmental Sciences” (18.4%), “Energy & Fuels” (17.8%),
“Biotechnology & Applied Microbiology” (17.5%), “Engineering,
Chemical” (14.0%), and “Ecology” (8.2%) were the most pub-
lished subject areas as designated by the publishers of the
Web of Knowledge database.
Similar to the papers covered in the original sample of 5892
papers, the first five subject headings designated by the
publishers of the Web of Knowledge in this sample suggest
a domination of applied and basic sciences rather than solely
basic sciences.
These data provide ample evidence for the high citation
impact of the research on the production of the bioenergy
from biomass using a core sample of papers at the wider scale.
As discussed for the biofuel and algae fields, the data on the
citation impact of 5892 papers in the original sample provide
helpful data on the knowledge diffusion from these papers to
the journals and subject areas outlined in citation sample of
42,641 papers [11].
513
4. Conclusion
The importance of the research on the production of bio-
energy from biomass has been highlighted by a number of
high-profile papers and reviews. Additionally, the importance
of the scientometric research regarding the evaluation of the
research activities in a certain topical field has also been
highlighted by a number of selected papers from various fields
as briefly reviewed in Introduction.
It has also been established that despite the increasing
importance of the research on the production of bioenergy
from biomass, the full scientometric evaluation of this field
has not yet been carried out and this paper has been the first-
ever such study of the research in this area although there
have been two other studies on biomass and bioenergy
focusing on the scientific productivity of the researchers and
citation network analysis.
Results presented in this paper provided helpful insights
into the research on the production of bioenergy from
biomass in many fronts including the document type, sample
size, the most publishing authors, the most publishing coun-
tries, the most publishing research institutions, the language
of papers, the publication years, the most publishing journals,
and the subject areas in the first strand of the analysis.
The results showed that the research on the production of
bioenergy from biomass had grown steadily during the last
three decades, more sharply between 2005 and 2010, following
the research activities on the biomass and bioenergy, sup-
ported globally by the policy makers, necessitated by the
concerns about future energy supply worldwide.
The results also provided valuable information on the
citations made to the sample papers on the production of
bioenergy from biomass including total number of citations,
Average Citations per Item, and H-index. There were 82,732
citations to 5892 papers on the production of bioenergy from
biomass with H-index of 102. The research field thus has had
a significant citation impact on the general literature.
However, this impact was significantly lower for the papers
indexed in SSCI in relation to the SCIE in terms of H-index as
fewer papers were indexed by the SSCI in relation to the SCIE.
This provides further incentives for all the stakeholders of
the research on the production of bioenergy from biomass, but
especially for the researchers and their institutions and their
countries to do more research in this area as the use of the
scientometric analysis in hiring, reappointment, tenure and
promotion decisions by the higher education institutions have
been in place for many years [84,85].
This first-ever full scientometric study on the production of
bioenergy from biomass shows that the scientometric anal-
ysis has a great potential to gain valuable insights into the
evolution of the research in this field as in the case of new
emerging technologies and processes such as nanoscience
and nanotechnology [86], as well as new emerging field of
biofuels [11,87e92]. Therefore, this piece of scientometric
study should be complemented by the content analysis
studies as well as integrative literature reviews covering all
the core areas of the research in this field.
Thus, with more analytical information in this field, all the
stakeholders would benefit contributing more effectively to
514 b i o m a s s a n d b i o e n e r g y 4 7 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 5 0 4 e5 1 5
the production of bioenergy from biomass following the
teaching of the “New Institutional Theory” [20e24].
Acknowledgement
The author gratefully acknowledges the kind editorial support
by Dr. Ralph P. Overend, the Editor and the three anonymous
Referees as well as the kind institutional support by Prof. Dr.
Ali Akmaz, Rector of Sirnak University and Prof. Dr. Ayhan
Demirbas, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at the same
university.
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