Has Quaternary palynology reached its climax?

Throughout more than 100 years of its history palynology has become an independent discipline that is being applied in various fields from palaeoecology, aerobiology, forensic sciences to taxonomy. Bibliometric analysis allows to distinguish different phases in the evolution of palynology. From the initial phase, when the first pioneer results were released, through the building phase when the potential of pollen analysis has been expanding into new research areas, to mature phase in which palynology becomes a basic research method with worldwide recognition applied in many scientific fields. However, the scientometric analysis of palynological documents suggests that in the second decade of the 20th century, the increasing trend of the number of published documents stopped. This tendency has been observed in most of the journals publishing palynological content. This may suggest that the discipline has reached its climax. Moreover, the last couple of years show a slow but constant drop in the number of published documents. During this period also a decrease in mean citation per document and per year is observed. This poses a question – does this issue reflect only the state of the discipline or is that a wider phenomenon touching also other scientific fields related to palynology as for example palaeoecology? On the other hand, bibliometric analysis points out also some positive aspects of the evolution of palynology such as the increase in international co-authorship and the increase in the number of co-authors per document that indicates the development and specialization of the discipline.