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ABSTRACT
We carried out a bibliometric analysis of literature related to glaciers in polar regions from the period 1987-2016 indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded database. A comprehensive review was performed by analysing the research output trends, publication categories, main journals, leading countries and their collaborations, leading scientists, author keywords and Keywords Plus. The results indicated that the number of publications related to glaciers in polar regions has increased rapidly. The USA and several European countries, including the UK, France, Germany and Switzerland, are the leaders in the field of glacial studies, as reflected both in the productivity measures and in the distribution of core scientists. Quaternary Science Reviews, the Journal of Glaciology, and Geophysical Research Letters were the most productive journals for glacial studies. The synthesized analysis of the keywords demonstrated the current research emphases and hinted at future research trends. Reconstructing past climate changes through studies of ice-core records is one of the most important research subjects. Numerical modelling has become a commonly used tool in polar region glacial research. A better understanding of the responses of glaciers to widespread climatic warming is needed now and in the future.
KEYWORDS
publications; climate change; ice-core records
ABBREVIATIONS
CAGR: compound annual growth rate; CNRS: France's National Center for Scientific Research (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); GR: growth rate; p-index: performance index; SCIE: Science Citation Index Expanded; TC: total citations to glacier-related articles in a given journal or by a given author; TP: total number of glacier-related articles in a given journal or by a given author; TC/TP: average citations per glacier-related article in a given journal or by a given author
(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)
Introduction
Glacial ice covers 10% of the land area on Earth at present, approximately one-third of its maximum since the last ice age. Glaciers store approximately 75% of the world's fresh water and therefore are an important freshwater resource and a major contributor to ongoing sea-level rise (Vaughan et al. 2013). In addition, glaciers preserve a remarkable record of past climatic and atmospheric conditions on Earth and provide a potential source of information for better understanding past environmental changes. The study of glaciers also has great significance for predicting future climate and environmental changes.
Modern glacial...