The Matthew effect in environmental science publication: A bibliometric analysis of chemical substances in journal articles

Table 1 Top-20 chemicals covered by environmental journals during 2000-2009.

Rank	Substance name	Number of links 2000-2009	Fraction of total titles published > 2000	Average number of citations*
1	Copper	9573	53	11.5
2	Lead	8926	42	9.9
3	Zinc	8323	45	11.9
4	Cadmium	8199	41	11.7
5	Iron	6948	60	13.6
6	Nickel	5395	49	13.0
7	Chromium	5123	54	12.3
8	Arsenic	4626	74	14.4
9	Mercury	4399	51	11.8
10	Manganese	4311	53	10.8
11	1,1'-Biphenyl	3897	42	14.5
12	Aluminum	3416	31	6.5
13	Benzo[a]pyrene	2842	66	9.1
14	Phenanthrene	2669	72	12.4
15	Pyrene	2447	43	9.8
16	Naphthalene	2206	53	13.4
17	Ethanol	2197	42	8.8
18	Cobalt	2143	49	10.1
19	Benzene	2113	47	10.1
20	Fluoranthene	2091	54	8.3
		Sum = 91,844	Average = 51	Average = 11.2

Number of article links from SciFinder for 2000-2009, the relative number of publications during this decade compared to the total number since 1900, and the average number of citations per article for the given substance during the period 2000-2009 from the Web of Science.

ISSN: 1476-069X