Bibliometric Analysis on the Papers Dedicated to Microplastics in Wastewater Treatments

The presence of microplastics (MPs) in the environment is becoming a problem for soils and seas, as well as for the food chain of animals and humans. The scientific community has been called upon to contribute to solving the problem and several papers have been published, especially in the last decade. The aim of this work is to carry out a bibliometric analysis of the scientific literature dedicated to the problem of MPs, highlighting its course over the years, and to identify the sectors to which the research could be profitably addressed. The VOSviewer software has been used to perform the analysis of the data in which specific maps were used to represent the network of the relationships among countries, journals, organizations, authors, and keywords related to the investigated topic and subtopics. The results of the survey demonstrated that during the investigated range of time, most attention has been paid to the individuation of the MPs, and to marine pollution, while a gap seems to exist in the possible advanced oxidation processes specifically addressing the degradation of MPs and their derivates.

Automated summary

The presence of microplastics poses a problem for the environment and food chain, with the scientific community being called upon to contribute more research to address this issue. A bibliometric analysis revealed a focus on identifying microplastics and marine pollution, but a gap in research addressing advanced oxidation processes for the degradation of MPs and their derivates.