A bibliometric analysis on the solid waste-related research from 1982 to 2013 in Iran

Background A bibliometric analysis was used to assess the trend of solid waste-related publications produced by Iran and indexed in Scopus from 1982 to 2013. The study aims to analyze the distribution of languages, countries, institutes, journals, author keywords, authorship pattern and co-authorship relationships. Results The publication outputs showed an exponential trend (R2 = 0.98) and increased by 45.3 % per year from 1982 to 2011. It was received with a decreasing trend to 44 papers at the end of 2013. Journal of Environmental Studies published the most papers. University of Tehran (25 %), Islamic Azad University (8.24 %), Tehran University of Medical Sciences (7.35 %) played active roles in the publication and Abduli MA was the most productive author (9.12 %) in this field. The English language was dominant language of all publications (88.24 %). The appearance of keywords namely “Heavy metals”, “landfill leachate” and “site selection” reveals the importance of release of heavy metals through landfill leachates and site selection issues in Iran. Conclusions A downward trend in the number of publications is likely to be continued in future years. The highest cooperation was found among the capital universities in Iran and other institutions had a minor role in the production of articles. It is hoped that transferring the experiences by main universities and starting up teamwork activities may increase the number of researches in this field. It is expected that this study could be the basis for a better understanding of development of researches related to solid waste in Iran.