What are Europe's research institutions doing for water?

摘要

What has been happening across Europe's lab benches before innovations emerge in the public eye? A meta-analysis of peer-reviewed papers gives us the chance to see this. 5,645 peer-reviewed papers on municipal and industrial wastewater treatment which were cited between 2011 and 2019 were assessed by a team led by Bath University's Julia Marcal. The team used biblio-metric analysis to identify how influential each paper was in terms of the authors' standing, the journal's impact factor and citations per article. The highest number of articles by country came from Spain (571) reflecting Spain's belated drive in 2014 to develop 400 new wastewater treatment plants to comply with the urban wastewater treatment directive by 2020. This saw Spanish institutions occupy six of the top twenty in Europe, although the list was topped the Netherlands' Delft University of Technology. Just one British institution featured in the list - Cranfield, at number 11 - although Britain was fifth highest in terms of overall publications.