Intellectual Authorities and Hubs of Green Chemistry

Green Chemistry (GC) is an answer to the problems ensuing from chemical pollution, adopting a proactive, prevention-based stance. After nearly three decades of its coming into being, the advances in the field towards groundbreaking chemical practice are still under discussion and new research is needed in order to systematize existing knowledge and to point to efficient means to select information. Our purpose with this study is to broaden the understanding on GC research structure, by pointing the researchers that have most contributed to its growth, spread and consolidation (its intellectual hubs), and the authors upon whose knowledge they have drawn (intellectual authorities). We analyzed 14,142 documents either containing the term “green chemistry” or published in Green Chemistry and Green Chemistry Letters and Reviews between 1990 and 2017, using network analysis and co-citation analysis. Fourteen hubs were found, and twenty-one intellectual authorities, distributed along six big specialties, previously described in the literature. Results corroborate previous analyses of the field, but this research has the advantage of stemming from the dynamics of scientific production, rather than from previously defined qualitative categories of the field itself.