Mapping of top papers in the subject category of Water Resources based on the Essential Science Indicators

Based on the Essential Science Indicators (ESI) database, this study analyzed 798 top papers in the subject category of Water Resources from 2008 to 2018. The 798 top papers include 797 highly cited papers and 21 hot papers in the field. Distributions of document type, language of publication, scientific output, and publication of journals are reported in this article. Co-authorship network visualization of author, organizations and countries, co-occurrence network visualization of all keywords was visualized using VOS viewer software. Results showed that 798 papers, all written in English, were from 2,845 authors, 80 countries/territories and 1,107 organizations, listed in 49 journals in the field of water resources. Top 5 core journals with higher impact factor ranked as Water Research, Journal of Hydrology, Desalination, Catena and Advances in Water Resources. Top 5 countries and regions were USA, China, Australia, England and Germany. Top 5 organizations were Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of California System, Helmholtz Association, Delft University of Technology and Eth Zurich. Based on the analysis of network map of VOSviewer, there is cooperation for authors, organizations and countries or regions. The analysis of keywords showed that the research of water resource was separated 6 clusters. This study demonstrates that there are more top papers come from journals with the higher IF and higher rank in Category of Water Resources. Therefore, authors can choose their ideal Journal with a high impact factor to publish papers in the English language related to this research field.