Bibliometrics and visualization analysis regarding research on the development of microplastics

Microplastics have caused considerable harm to the environment and threatened human health due to their strong adsorption and hard biodegradation. Therefore, the research of microplastic received increasing attention recently, producing numbers of related achievements. To comprehensively grasp the quantitative information of published papers on microplastics, we analyzed the research progress and hotspots of microplastics through visualization software VOSviewer. The results show that the number of literature on microplastics published from 2009 to 2019 increased exponentially (R-2 = 0.9873). The top 10 cited references are mainly in zooplankton ingesting microplastics, microplastics in artificially cultivated bivalve, microplastics in surface waters such as lakes, etc. The cutting-edge microplastics research is adsorption, biodegradation, ingestion and accumulation model, and toxicity analysis. In addition, the results predict that the combination of constructed wetland, biotechnology, and photocatalysis to remove microplastics will become new hotspots. The study provides researchers in microplastics with an overview of existing research and directional guidance for future research.

Automated summary

The research on microplastics has shown an exponential growth in the number of published literature from 2009 to 2019, with hotspots mainly focused on zooplankton ingesting microplastics, microplastics in artificially cultivated bivalves, and microplastics in surface waters such as lakes. Cutting-edge research in microplastics includes adsorption, biodegradation, ingestion, accumulation models, and toxicity analysis.