Bibliometric perspectives in mapping the progress of river water quality index studies

ABSTRACT This paper employs a bibliometric analysis to guide researchers in forecasting the trajectory of research related to the development of the river water quality index (WQI). It scrutinizes issues such as variable selection, weight allocation, and the formulation of the function, which are key concerns in the river WQI development. This study also addresses gaps in the existing literature by examining how information about river WQIs is disseminated, focusing on aspects such as contributing research and prevalent keywords. While bibliometric analysis has been widely applied in various research domains, its use in developing river WQIs has been comparatively limited. To address this, the current study conducts a bibliometric analysis to identify trends in index creation and to assess the current state of the literature in the field of WQIs. This examination includes a comprehensive review of papers published in the Scopus database from 1973 to 2024, relevant to the river WQI. Utilizing tools such as R, VOSviewer, and BiblioMagika, the research uncovers patterns in publication among authors and organizations. A finding is that China and India have emerged as leading contributors to publications in this field, indicating their pivotal role in the advancing river water quality index research.