Distribución geográfica e institucional de la producción científica sobre erosión hídrica en España (1955-2004)

The primary aim of this paper is to analyze the scientific literature of soil erosion research in Spain by means of bibliometric indicators. The period under consideration runs from 1955 to 2004, representing a total of 1861 works published in national (522 references) and international (419) journals, national (352) and international (105) conferences proceedings, book chapters (288), books (82), doctoral thesis (63) and other documents (30). Bibliographic information was collected from Bib-Eron, a bibliographic database on soil erosion. The analysis was based on the scientific documents encoded in the database. Bibliometric indicators have been employed in order to establish the geographical distribution of scientific production, institutional affiliation of authors, institutional productivity and interinstitutional collaboration. The spatial distribution shows that five autonomous regions (Comunidad Valenciana, Andalucia, Region de Murcia, Cataluna and Aragon) account for 75% of the scientific documents published. The interprovincial distribution is very uneven. This distribution is conditioned by the location of the most productive research centres and the location of the experimental stations financed by the RESEL Network. The scientific production is distributed among more than 100 departments of 47 Spanish universities, 95 research units or departments of foreign universities, 14 CSIC research institutes, 5 joint research centres between the CSIC and Spanish universities and more than 40 organisms of public administration. Spanish universities constitute the most potent source of scientific production. CSIC research institutes form the second institutional group in quantitative importance. About 67% of the publications are written by authors from the same institution.