Scientometrics (2014) 100:189–202

DOI 10.1007/s11192-013-1189-z

A bibliometric analysis of research on upflow anaerobic

sludge blanket (UASB) from 1983 to 2012

Baogang Zhang • Ye Liu • Caixing Tian • Zhijun Wang •

Ming Cheng • Nan Chen • Chuanping Feng

Received: 5 September 2013 / Published online: 24 November 2013

Ó Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary 2013

Abstract Upflow anaerobic sludge blanket/bed (UASB) has been recognized as a robust
technology arousing wide concern in wastewater treatment research recently. In this study,
a bibliometric analysis was performed to evaluate the publications on UASB research from
1983 to 2012, based on the Science Citation Index databases. It was identified that a total of
2363 UASB-related outputs were published in 220 journals over the past 30 years. Results
showed that China and Indian Institute of Technology in India came as the most productive
country and institute publishing most articles on UASB, respectively. The most productive
field of ‘‘wastewater treatment’’ would still maintain the leading role as to provide a good
reference on the UASB research in the future. Besides, the performance improving
approaches and practical applications of the UASB would probably continue as the two
main developing orientations. This study is to serve as an alternative and innovative way of
revealing the research trends in UASB.

Keywords Bibliometric
Research trend
Upflow anaerobic sludge

blanket/bed (UASB)
Word cluster analysis

Introduction

Global environmental change during past decades, including land degradation, changes in
hydrology, loss of biodiversity, and changes in climate patterns resulting from enhanced
anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gas emissions and wastewater discharges, will have

B. Zhang (&)
Y. Liu
C. Tian
Z. Wang
M. Cheng
N. Chen
C. Feng

Key Laboratory of Groundwater Circulation and Evolution, Ministry of Education,
China University of Geosciences Beijing, Beijing 100083, China
e-mail: zbgcugb@gmail.com

B. Zhang
Y. Liu
C. Tian
Z. Wang
M. Cheng
N. Chen
C. Feng

School of Water Resources and Environment, China University of Geosciences Beijing,
Beijing 100083, China

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190 Scientometrics (2014) 100:189–202

serious consequences for human survival, particularly for more vulnerable groups
(Ericksen et al. 2009). The anaerobic treatment process is increasingly recognized as the
core method of an advanced technology for environmental protection and resource pres-
ervation (Veeresh et al. 2005). Meanwhile, anaerobic treatment of sewage comes to attract
the attention of sanitary engineers and decision makers. It can play a role in aspects of
water disposal, waste treatment, inorganic nutrients removal, and reuse of water (Lak-
aniemi et al. 2013). Since the introduction by Lettinga et al. (1980), upflow anaerobic
sludge blanket/bed (UASB) has been recognized as an alternative cost-effective process for
the treatment of various wastewaters. In an UASB reactor, a dense sludge bed is estab-
lished at the bottom where all the biological transformations take place. Under favorable
conditions, bacteria will aggregate in flocs and granules with good settling properties so as
not to be washed out from the system (Hulshoff Pol et al. 1983). The success of UASB
concept and process has aptly been described as a robust technology and by far the most
widely used high-efficiency anaerobic process for wastewater treatment (Seghezzo et al.
1998). Scientific articles on UASB have demonstrated a rapid increase in quantity over the
past several decades. Some papers presenting the latest research achievements have been
published on authoritative scientific journals with many citations, such as Environmental
Science and Technology and Water Research (Jeganathan et al. 2006; Tang et al. 2011).
Research on UASB has been published in a large number of journals from authors
distributed all over the world. However, few efforts have been made to gather systematic
data on the global scientific outputs on UASB research. Moreover, the bibliometric ana-
lysis is a common research method which has already been widely applied in scientific
production and research tendency studies in many science and engineering fields (Cronin
2001; Yang et al. 2013). The conventional bibliometric methods center on citation and
content analysis, while the newly-developed bibliometric analysis is able to further eval-
uate the scholarly outputs of authors, institutions, and countries, identify the temporal
evolution of research patterns, and underlie international collaboration and author distri-
bution (Chiu and Ho 2007; Zhang et al. 2009; Li et al. 2011). It has been demonstrated to
be effective in our previous studies to reveal the research trends of nitrate and sulfate
removals (Huang et al. 2012).
In this study, a bibliometric analysis of UASB research publications from the period
1983 to 2012 was performed. The aim of this study was to reveal underlying patterns in
scientific outputs, characteristics of the international collaboration and author distribution
of UASB research, thus provide a potential guide for future research related to UASB.

Data sources and methodology

Documents analyzed in this study were retrieved from the ISI Web of Science, based on
the online Science Citation Index (SCI) database. According to Journal Citation Reports
(JCR), 8,281 major journals were indexed with citation references across 174 scientific
disciplines in 2012. With ‘‘upflow anaerobic sludge blanket/bed’’ as the main searching
keywords, documents information of titles, abstracts, and keywords based on the online
system were collected from 1983 to 2012. Articles originating from England, Scotland,
Northern Ireland, and Wales were reclassified as being from one country—the United
Kingdom (UK). Articles from Hong Kong were not included in China. The words in titles
and abstracts were separated, and then conjunctions and prepositions such as ‘‘and’’, ‘‘of’’,
‘‘in’’, and ‘‘on’’ were discarded, as they were meaningless for further analysis. The key-
words including those reported by authors and those assigned by ISI, as well as words in

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Scientometrics (2014) 100:189–202 191

the title, were identified and separated into 3 ten-year spans (1983–1992, 1993–2002, and
2003–2012), then their ranks and frequencies were calculated. Different words with
identical meanings were grouped and considered as a single keyword (Huang et al. 2012).
Collaboration type was determined by the addresses of the authors, where the term ‘‘single
country publication’’ was assigned if all the researchers’ addresses were from the same
country. The term ‘‘internationally collaborative publication’’ was designated to those
articles that were coauthored by researchers from multiple countries. The term ‘‘single
institute publication’’ was assigned if the researchers’ addresses were from the same
institute. The term ‘‘inter-institutionally collaborative publication’’ was assigned if authors
were from different institutes (Ye et al. 2013). Besides, the reported impact factor (IF) of
each journal was obtained from the 2013 JCR.

Results and discussion

Characteristics of publication outputs

In present study, there were 13 document types found in the total 2,363 publications during
the 30-year study period. Articles came out as the most predominant document type
comprising 77.6 % of the total publications. All the original articles were utilized for the
further analysis as relevant citable items. Proceeding papers were identified to account for
almost 17.5 %, exceeding most of the other documents. The other document types were
review (99), note (7), correction (3), letter (2), editorial letter (2), discussion (1), and so on.
As much as 97 % of the journal articles were published in English. Three other minor
publication languages also appeared in the other articles, namely Portuguese (37), Spanish
(18) and German (2). These data reveals that English has provided a most convenient way
for researchers’ communication from different countries, thus promoting the research on
UASB.
There had been a rapid development over the past 30 years for UASB research, from 1
article in 1983 to 148 in 2012 with ‘‘upflow anaerobic sludge blanket/bed’’ as the searching
keyword in titles. In Fig. 1, both the number of the SCI documents and articles were
displayed to reveal the growing tendencies over the past three decades. In the initial stage
of the development, UASB research did not catch any attentions until 1990 when it went to
acceleration. Subsequently, both the numbers of documents and articles kept steady
increase. The growing trends obtained in Fig. 1 demonstrated that increased attention had
been paid to the UASB research.
Based on the statistics in 2012, the publication output of UASB research was mainly
distributed in 31 SCI subject categories according to the classification in JCR. And the top
five subject categories were Engineering (801, 21.2 %), Environmental Sciences and
Ecology (800, 21.2 %), Biotechnology and Applied Microbiology (678, 18.0 %), Water
Resources (437, 11.6 %) and Agriculture (292, 7.7 %), which were still on the rise by and
large. As depicted in Fig. 2, the article numbers in Engineering and Environmental Sci-
ences and Ecology had both played dominant roles ever since. The number of articles
classified into Biotechnology and Applied Microbiology just ran from third to the second.
The following categories also exhibited continuously up-flowing tendencies, and speeded
up since 2002. Some other categories that were not revealed in Fig. 2, including Energy
and Fuels (283), Chemistry (100) and Microbiology (97) had also presented development
potentials. The increasing data indicated more devotions into UASB from different angles
in this research field.

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192 Scientometrics (2014) 100:189–202

250

225
All documents
Number of publications 200 Articles
175

150

125

100

75

50

25

0
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
Year

Fig. 1 World SCI-EXPANDED journal publications with UASB as the searching keyword during
1983–2012

100
Engineering
90
Environmental Sciences & Ecology
80 Biotechnology & Applied Microbiology
Number of articles

Water Resources
70
Agriculture
60

50

40

30

20

10

0
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013

Year

Fig. 2 Growth trends of the top five most productive subject categories

Articles on UASB were published in a wide range of 220 journals. In Table 1, the top
20 most productive journals were summarized along with the total numbers of articles
published in the corresponding journals, impact factors of journals in 2012, citations and
cited references of these journal articles. In the UASB research field, Bioresource
Technology published the most articles (234, 12.77 %), with the most cited reference

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Scientometrics (2014) 100:189–202 193

(6,629) and less citation number (2,962). Water Research followed next by its second
most articles (168, 9.17 %), with a high impact factor (4.865) due to its most cited
references (5,153), and a second most citation number (4,768). This indicated that UASB
research had been widely involved in the water field on this journal as the typical focus.
Biotechnology and Bioengineering came with a lower rank (7th) based on its less
publications (50, 2.73 %), while the citation (1,214) and cited reference (1,489) were
both quite ahead of its rank. It might not be a high-yielding journal, but one earning
more concerns in this field. The average citation rate would probably serve as the most
significant director to assess the journals impacts in UASB field. Besides, the average
cited reference numbers was more or less indicative of the importance and influence of
the published articles.

Distribution of country/territory

The output number of different countries and territories more or less reflected their
research levels and contributions in the UASB field. Every country and territory was
counted depending on the nationality of each author who had involved in the published
papers (Li et al. 2011). Of the total 2,079 articles with author addresses, there were 1,363
single country articles accounting for 65 % of the total and the other 716 were interna-
tionally collaborated. In Table 2, total number of articles, single country articles, inter-
nationally collaborative articles, first author articles and corresponding author articles of
the top 20 countries and territories were displayed and analyzed. China had taken an
obviously dominant position by issuing the most articles (232) including 165 single
country articles and 67 internationally collaborative ones. Moreover, the first author and
corresponding author articles from China had both ranked the first by the most occupations
of 11.97 and 12.15 % respectively. Netherlands and the following Brazil had also per-
formed great potentials in view of the total number of articles (166 and 160 respectively).
While Brazil seemed to be more comparative in terms of its second ranks in the total
articles (10.12 %), first author articles (9.04 %) and corresponding author articles
(8.83 %).
The publishing numbers of India maintained at a comparative high level, except for the
collaborative articles rank which had taken up less percent. In contrast, the USA had made
up for the India disadvantage with 30 collaborative articles ranking the third (8.38 %),
while other ranks were relatively lower. The other following countries and territories also
contributed quite a number of articles and were sure to promote the UASB research in the
future.
The tendency curves of top five most productive countries were displayed in Fig. 3 with
more than 1,000 articles included. China had undoubtedly contributed the most to the
UASB research with its fast growing articles in this field. It was Netherlands pioneered the
innovative route and concept at the preliminary stage of UASB development. Among the
top 5 productive countries, Brazil was the latest (1997) to start but the fastest to catch up
and even surpassed Netherlands in 2009, when applications of UASB treatment had
practically been considered in Brazil. Besides, the following India and Japan had also
helped paving the way for UASB research as the pioneers in the 1990s, but started to lag
behind in the 2000s due to their relatively lower growth rates. However, these positive
trends and progresses had great relationships with the whole world’s attention and
acknowledgement, implying a promising prospect.

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 Table 1 Top 20 most productive journals based on total number of articles
194

Journal TN TNR (%) IF TC TC/TN NR NR/TN

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Bioreource Technology 234 1 (12.77) 4.75 2,962 12.7 6,629 28.3
Water Research 168 2 (9.17) 4.66 5,153 30.7 4,768 28.4
Water Science and Technology 126 3 (6.88) 1.10 651 5.2 2,458 19.5
Environmental Technology 96 4 (5.24) 1.61 748 7.8 2,307 24.0
Process Biochemistry 58 5 (3.17) 2.41 1,179 20.3 1,578 27.2
Journal of Environmental Engineering-ASCE 55 6 (3) 1.40 828 15.1 1,577 28.7
Biotechnology and Bioengineering 50 7 (2.73) 3.65 1,214 24.3 1,489 29.8
Journal of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology 42 8 (2.29) 2.50 463 11.0 1,125 26.8
Water Environment Research 39 9 (2.13) 1.13 507 13.0 1,859 47.7
Journal of Hazardous Materials 36 10 (1.97) 3.93 444 12.3 1,314 36.5
Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology 36 10 (1.97) 3.69 1,215 33.8 938 26.1
Journal of Environmental Science and Health Part A—Toxic/Hazardous 32 12 (1.75) 1.25 97 3.0 871 27.2
Substances & Environmental Engineering
Water SA 32 12 (1.75) 0.88 944 29.5 3,005 93.9
Chemosphere 27 14 (1.47) 3.14 606 22.4 740 27.4
International Journal of Hydrogen Energy 26 15 (1.42) 3.55 541 20.8 968 37.2
Journal of Fermentation and Bioengineering 23 16 (1.26) – 524 22.8 581 25.3
Biotechnology Letters 22 17 (1.2) 1.85 243 11.0 289 13.1
Desalination 21 18 (1.15) 3.04 109 5.2 608 29.0
Journal of Environmental Science-China 20 19 (1.09) 1.77 47 2.4 407 20.4
Applied and Environmental Microbiology 19 20 (1.04) 3.68 874 46.0 691 36.4

TN total number of articles, TNR total number rank, IF 2013 ISI impact factor, TC total citation count, TC/TN average of citations per article, NR cited reference count, NR/TN
the average cited references count per article
Scientometrics (2014) 100:189–202
Scientometrics (2014) 100:189–202 195

Table 2 Top 20 most productive Country/territory based on total number of articles

Country TN Single-country Internationally-collaborated FNR (%) CNR (%)

SN SNR (%) IN INR (%)

China 232 165 1 (12.11) 67 2 (9.36) 1 (11.97) 1 (12.15)

Netherlands 166 78 6 (5.72) 88 1 (12.29) 4 (7.45) 4 (7.65)
Brazil 160 138 2 (10.12) 22 7 (3.07) 2 (9.04) 2 (8.83)
India 155 125 3 (9.17) 30 5 (4.19) 3 (8.22) 3 (8.18)
Japan 133 87 5 (6.38) 46 4 (6.42) 6 (6.28) 6 (6.11)
Turkey 115 100 4 (7.34) 15 13 (2.09) 5 (6.51) 5 (6.52)
USA 108 48 9 (3.52) 60 3 (8.38) 8 (3.81) 9 (3.56)
Spain 82 53 7 (3.89) 29 6 (4.05) 7 (4.34) 7 (4.62)
Canada 71 52 8 (3.82) 19 10 (2.65) 9 (3.64) 8 (3.68)
South Korea 60 45 10 (3.3) 15 13 (2.09) 10 (3.35) 10 (3.38)
Mexico 56 45 10 (3.3) 11 23 (1.54) 11 (2.7) 11 (2.9)
Taiwan 53 39 12 (2.86) 14 16 (1.96) 12 (2.52) 12 (2.61)
Singapore 51 31 15 (2.27) 20 9 (2.79) 13 (2.46) 12 (2.61)
UK 50 36 13 (2.64) 14 16 (1.96) 14 (2.29) 15 (1.72)
South Africa 43 36 13 (2.64) 7 26 (0.98) 14 (2.29) 14 (1.84)
Belgium 35 20 18 (1.47) 15 13 (2.09) 18 (1.76) 19 (1.3)
Thailand 34 17 20 (1.25) 17 11 (2.37) 20 (1.35) 18 (1.54)
Denmark 33 26 16 (1.91) 7 26 (0.98) 16 (1.82) 20 (1.24)
Egypt 32 19 19 (1.39) 13 19 (1.82) 16 (1.82) 16 (1.66)
Portugal 29 17 20 (1.25) 12 20 (1.68) 21 (1.17) 20 (1.24)

TN total number of articles, SN number of single country articles, SNR single country articles’ rank, IN
number of internationally collaborative articles, INR collaborative articles rank, FNR first author rank, CNR
corresponding author article rank

40
China
35 Netherlands
Brazil
30 India
Japan
Number of articles

25

20

15

10

0
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013

Year

Fig. 3 Growth trends of the top five most productive countries

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196 Scientometrics (2014) 100:189–202

Distribution of institute analysis

The top 20 most productive source institutes were listed in Table 3, along with the total
article numbers, total citations of the institute and average citations of per article. Every
institute counted was judged by the affiliation of each author who had involved in the
published article. Of all the 1,716 articles with author’s institute information, 894 (52 %)
were single institute articles and 822 (48 %) were inter-institutionally collaborative ones.
In Table 3, China and Netherlands had both taken 4 out of the top 20 most productive
institutes, which again strengthened their first and second ranks as most productive
countries. Indian Institute of Technology in India had issued the most total articles (77),
including the most independent articles (43) and second most inter-institutionally articles
(34), with the total 698 citations. The following Wageningen Agricultural University in
Netherlands possessed the second most total articles (51) of the most total 1,705 citations,
with second most dependent articles (29) and less inter-institutionally collaborated articles
(22). Wageningen University and Research Centre which also located in Netherlands had
made comparable contribution of the same total articles (51) with less total citations (957),
independent articles (22) and more inter-institutionally collaborated (29). Nagaoka Uni-
versity of Technology in Japan ranking the 4th in total publications had an outstanding
citation number (1,258) with its first rank in inter-institutionally collaborated articles, due
to its probable emphasis on more teamwork and academic exchanges to reinforce the
influences in the UASB field. The following other institutes exhibited individual advances
and characters from different aspects almost in parallel. Since the higher the citation rate
was, the greater the institute’s position in the field, the researchers in the UASB field
should balance the independent and collaborative work to promote the research develop-
ment in the future.

Most cited articles

Article citations more or less would always set forth their cogency levels and impacts in the
UASB field. In Table 4, the top 20 most cited articles on UASB had been displayed in each
year since publication by 2012. Among the top 20, there were 5 articles from the Neth-
erlands and Japan, respectively, which again proved their unshakable leadership in UASB
research area, in consistent with the data collected in the productive countries. From 1993
to 2012, the most frequently cited paper ‘‘Fluorescence in situ hybridization using 16S
rRNA-targeted oligonucleotides reveals localization of methanogens and selected uncul-
tured bacteria in mesophilic and thermophilic sludge granules’’ published by Applied and
Environmental Microbiology was from Japan, as one of the classics on UASB researches
(Sekiguchi et al. 1999). Another excellent article came as ‘‘Hydrogen and ethanol pro-
duction from glycerol-containing wastes discharged after biodiesel manufacturing pro-
cess’’, which had enjoyed the most average citations per year to provide the evolving
development in this field (Ito et al. 2005). Besides, Water Research had published 4 out of
the top 20 articles, serving as a most authoritative journal presenting reliable results for
researchers on UASB. Another article titled ‘‘Biohydrogen production using an up-flow
anaerobic sludge blanket reactor’’ was published with 155 citations from Taiwan in 2004
(Chang and Lin 2004), came up with a totally new application of UASB to promote its
development. All the 20 articles were sorted into two aspects: the performance improving
approaches—including the bacteria (Sekiguchi et al. 1999), operating conditions (Miron
et al. 2000) and the practical applications of UASB (Najafpoura et al. 2006), such as
wastewater treatment (Fang et al. 1996; van der Zee et al. 2001) and biohydrogen

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 Table 3 Top 20 most productive institutes based on total number of articles
Institute TN Single-institute Inter-institutionally collaborative TC TC/TN

SN SNR (%) IN INR (%)

Indian Institute of Technology, India 77 43 1 (4.81) 34 2 (1.68) 698 9

Wageningen Agricultural University, Netherlands 51 29 2 (3.25) 22 19 (0.69) 1,705 35
Wageningen University and Research Centre, Netherlands 51 22 6 (2.46) 29 5 (1.43) 957 19
Nagaoka University of Technology, Japan 46 6 29 (0.67) 40 1 (1.98) 1,258 27
University of São Paulo, Brazil 42 18 7 (2.01) 24 6 (1.19) 300 7
Scientometrics (2014) 100:189–202

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 40 25 4 (2.8) 15 16 (0.74) 1,332 33

Wageningen University, Netherlands 35 5 39 (0.56) 30 4 (1.48) 493 14
Dokuz Eylül University, Turkey 33 29 3 (3.24) 4 83 (0.2) 456 14
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil 33 15 9 (1.68) 18 10 (0.89) 80 2
Technical University of Denmark, Denmark 32 25 4 (2.8) 7 41 (0.35) 881 28
Tohoku University, Japan 31 – – 31 3 (1.53) 260 8
National Research Centre, Egypt 29 8 22 (0.89) 21 8 (1.04) 256 9
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Korea 27 8 22 (0.89) 22 7 (1.09) 379 14
Hiroshima University, Japan 26 11 14 (1.23) 15 16 (0.74) 559 22
University of Science and Technology of China, China 25 8 22 (0.89) 17 12 (0.84) 487 19
Zhejiang University, China 23 8 22 (0.89) 15 16 (0.74) 218 9
Harbin Institute technology, China 23 2 88 (0.22) 21 8 (1.04) 237 10
Chinese Academy of Sciences, China 23 13 12 (1.45) 10 26 (0.49) 288 13
University of Cape Town, South Africa 22 17 8 (1.9) 5 64 (0.25) 201 9
Istanbul Technical University, Turkey 21 5 38 (0.56) 16 13 (0.79) 97 5

TN total number of articles, SN number of single institute articles, SNR single institute articles’ rank, IN number of inter-institutionally collaborative articles, INR collaborative
articles rank, TC total citation count, TC/TN average of citations per article
197

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 Table 4 The most frequently cited articles during 1993–2012
198

Year TC C/Y Article/Journal Country/region

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1993 104 5 Maximum COD loading capacity in UASB reactors at 37-degrees-c/ Hong Kong
Journal of Environmental Engineering-ASCE
1994 129 7 Bacterial effect of long-chain fatty-acids in anaerobic-digestion/Water Netherlands
Environment Research
1995 62 3 High-rate anaerobic treatment of waste-water under psychrophilic Netherlands
conditions/Journal of Fermentation and Bioengineering
1996 108 6 Degradation of phenol in wastewater in an upflow anaerobic sludge China
blanket reactor/Water Research
1997 71 4 Enhanced hydrogen production in altered mixed acid fermentation of Japan
glucose by Enterobacter aerogenes/Journal of Fermentation and
Bioengineering
1998 206 14 Phylogenetic diversity of mesophilic and thermophilic granular sludges Japan
determined by 16S rRNA gene analysis/Microbiology-UK
1999 217 16 Fluorescence in situ hybridization using 16S rRNA-targeted Japan
oligonucleotides reveals localization of methanogens and selected
uncultured bacteria in mesophilic and thermophilic sludge granules/
Applied and Environmental Microbiology
2000 109 8 The role of sludge retention time in the hydrolysis and acidification of Netherlands
lipids, carbohydrates and proteins during digestion of primary sludge in
CSTR systems/Water Research
2001 144 12 Azo dye decolourisation by anaerobic granular sludge/Chemosphere Netherlands
2002 74 7 Decolorization and azo dye degradation by anaerobic/aerobic sequential Turkey
process/Enzyme and Microbial Technology
2003 81 8 Mechanisms and models for anaerobic granulation in upflow anaerobic Singapore
sludge blanket reactor/Water Research
2004 155 17 Biohydrogen production using an up-flow anaerobic sludge blanket Taiwan
reactor/International Journal of Hydrogen Energy
2005 147 18 Hydrogen and ethanol production from glycerol-containing wastes Japan
discharged after biodiesel manufacturing process/Journal of Bioscience
and Bioengineering
Scientometrics (2014) 100:189–202
 Table 4 continued

Year TC C/Y Article/Journal Country/region

2006 66 9 High-rate anaerobic digestion of palm oil mill effluent in an upflow Iran/Malaysia
anaerobic sludge-fixed film bioreactor. Process Biochemistry
2007 40 7 Identification and cultivation of anaerobic, syntrophic long-chain fatty Japan
acid-degrading microbes from mesophilic and thermophilic
methanogenic sludges/Applied and Environmental Microbiology
2008 43 9 Inactivation of ANAMMOX communities under concurrent operation of Thailand/Denmark
anaerobic ammonium oxidation (ANAMMOX) and denitrification/
Bioresource Technology
Scientometrics (2014) 100:189–202

2009 29 7 Anammox for ammonia removal from pig manure effluents: effect of Denmark/Spain
organic matter content on process performance/Bioresource Technology
2010 29 10 Upgrading of sewage treatment plant by sustainable and cost-effective Netherlands
separate treatment of industrial wastewater/Water Science and
Technology
2011 24 12 Performance of high-loaded ANAMMOX UASB reactors containing China/Pakistan
granular sludge/Water Research
2012 11 11 Reaction kinetics and removal of COD with treatment of TCE with the Turkey
synthetic wastewater in UASB reactors/Energy Education Science and
Technology Part A-Energy Science and Research

TC total citations of articles from publication to 2012, C/Y number of citations/year

199

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200 Scientometrics (2014) 100:189–202

production (Chang and Lin 2004). Generally, these yearly variations in the number of
citations would help trace the impact of publications and may light up our current
researches.

Hot issues

The analysis of the title words, keywords and Keywords Plus which always included the
information that the author would mostly express to the readers, was carried out to evaluate
research tendencies in present research. The bibliometric analysis of the titles had already
been applied to trace the trend of the Global Positioning System (Wang et al. 2013), the
global graphene research (Lv et al. 2011) and solid waste research (Yang et al. 2013). In
order to acquire more on the UASB research developing process completely, a new method
named ‘‘word cluster analysis’’ was employed here. It was a newly developed method to
give a comprehensive presentation of the research trends by combining the paper titles,
author keywords and Keywords Plus, which had been utilized to analyze the research
trends in atmospheric simulation (Ye et al. 2013) and risk assessment (Mao et al. 2010).
The top 20 most frequently used keywords in the articles on UASB were summarized in
Table 5. Every keyword involved was counted and ranked within each of the 6-year
intervals during 1993–2010. There were altogether 4,868 keywords existed in the 2,363
articles, totally appearing 19,213 times along with the UASB springing up over the past
30 years. However, 3,161 keywords which accounted for 65 % just appeared once then
never showed up. These rarely used keywords probably indicated a lack of continuity in

Table 5 Top 20 most frequently used keywords during 1993–2010 and in 3 six-year periods
Keywords TN 83–92 R (%) 93–02 R (%) 03–12 R (%)

UASB 1,115 1 (5.73) 1 (6.11) 1 (4.96)

Waste water 551 2 (2.83) 2 (2.97) 3 (2.92)
Digestion 276 6 (1.17) 3 (2.12) 2 (3.5)
Anaerobic treatment 269 4 (1.31) 4 (1.68) 5 (1.75)
Performance 257 3 (1.45) 13 (1.03) 20 (0.58)
Degradation 240 5 (1.26) 6 (1.25) 15 (0.87)
Sludge 217 7 (1.16) 9 (1.07) 20 (0.58)
Granular sludge 211 9 (0.94) 4 (1.68) 51 (0.29)
Waste water treatment 202 8 (1.13) 16 (0.85) 20 (0.58)
Anaerobic digestion 159 11 (0.69) 7 (1.16) 4 (2.04)
Start-up 149 13 (0.69) 9 (1.07) 20 (0.58)
Removal 134 10 (0.83) 41 (0.31) 51 (0.29)
Biodegradation 128 11 (0.69) 22 (0.6) 51 (0.29)
Anaerobic-digestion 126 15 (0.66) 20 (0.65) 20 (0.58)
Reactor 124 13 (0.69) 25 (0.54) 51 (0.29)
Bacteria 122 17 (0.6) 18 (0.69) 9 (1.46)
Inhibition 116 23 (0.47) 14 (0.96) 5 (1.75)
Anaerobic 116 21 (0.49) 15 (0.89) 9 (1.46)
Methanogenesis 114 24 (0.43) 9 (1.07) 11 (1.17)
Granulation 114 20 (0.51) 17 (0.78) 5 (1.75)

TN total number of keywords; R (%): rank and percentage of keywords in total articles

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Scientometrics (2014) 100:189–202 201

research and a wide disparity in research foci. In addition, the prepositions in titles
including ‘‘a’’, ‘‘an’’, ‘‘the’’, ‘‘by’’, ‘‘of’’, ‘‘with’’ and so on were rejected as they were
meaningless and helpless in the analysis.
Except ‘‘UASB’’ itself, the most frequently used keyword was identified as ‘‘waste
water’’ with its occurrences of 2 (2.83 %) in 1983–1992, 2 (2.97 %) in 1993–2002, 3
(2.92 %) in 2003–2012, respectively, indicating the UASB had enjoyed a wide application
potential in the field of wastewater treatment. For example, it had been demonstrated that
chemical wastewater, synthetic wastewater as well as practical wastewater could be treated
successfully in UASB (Najafpoura et al. 2006; Sondhi et al. 2010; Zhang et al. 2009).
Appearances of the followings such as ‘‘digestion’’, ‘‘anaerobic treatment’’, ‘‘perfor-
mance’’, ‘‘degradation’’ and ‘‘sludge’’ were no less than 30 times for each, and all of them
declared the centralized focus on improving the performance and function of UASB. The
rank and percentage of ‘‘inhibition’’ rose from 23 (0.47 %) in 1983–1992 to 5 (1.75 %) in
2003–2012, indicating that this issue should be paid more attention on during UASB
research and actual applications. Based on this analysis, researches and reviews in these
aspects could be arranged and summarized, which would further promote UASB studies.

Conclusions

In this study, significant information had been obtained on the bibliometric analysis of
UASB research trends throughout the period from 1983 to 2012. Totally, there were 2,363
articles in 220 journals, which revealed the rapid development of UASB research over the
past 30 years. Engineering and Bioresource Technology turned out to be the most pro-
ductive field and journal on the UASB research, respectively. It was obvious that appli-
cations in wastewater treatment would continue as the hot spot of UASB research.
According to the synthetical analysis of title-words, author keywords and Keywords Plus,
‘‘wastewater’’, ‘‘digestion’’ and ‘‘sludge’’ had been most frequently used words over the
past 30 years, which indicated that water treatment and sludge performance were the most
hot topics in UASB research. The findings of this study would help researchers improve the
performance and realize more applications of UASB in the future research.

Acknowledgments This research work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of
China (NSFC) as a young scholar project (No. 21307117), the Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of
Higher Education of China (No. 20120022120005) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central
Universities (No. 2652011263).

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