Publications of BRIC- and outreach countries in international journals on limnology

摘要

Pollution, overexploitation and climate warming endanger the freshwater ecosystems in many regions, particularly in developing countries. This publication asks if at least the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) group and the Outreach countries (in addition South Africa and Mexico), have the scientific capacity in limnology to mitigate this development. For this reason the scientific output was analyzed between 1999 and 2007. With a share of 5.0% of all limnological papers in 2007 world wide the P.R. China (Peoples Republic of China) produced the largest numbers of publications, followed by Brazil and Mexico. For comparison, this year Germany's share was 5.8% and the USA had the highest share with 33.9%. The growth rate was also highest for the P. R. China and Brazil. Based on the journal impact factors, China's quality of papers was best followed by South Africa and Russia. Brazil was strong in fish biology, whereas China published the most papers in all other disciplines.