A statistical assessment on international landslide literature (1945-2008)

In the present study, the analysis of the international landslide literature is aimed. The landslide is perhaps one of the most complex natural phenomena. Also, due to landslides, a considerable amount of loss of lives and economic losses is encountered throughout the world. Although a vast amount of landslide papers is published in international journals, a statistical assessment on this literature is not encountered. For this reason, this study is performed. For the assessment of the international landslide literature, the Science Citation Index Expanded (WOS; Web of Science) published by Institute of Scientific Information (now Thomson Scientific), USA for the period 1945-2008, is considered. A total of 3,468 publications are found and this data is stored into Oracle XE database and queried by using Structured Query Language and Procedural Language/Structured Query Language. In the following stages, some statistical analyses are performed and the possible trends are discussed.