Investigating and analyzing of the publication trend of low-flow research in Iran and the world

Research on low flow is important, not only from a fundamental point of view but also in terms of sustainable water resource management. Optimum water resources management is one of the most crucial challenges of the 21st century, and due to population growth and climate change, water supply in the future will probably depend on sustainable water sources. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) introduces low flow as a flow of rivers that continues during the dry period of the climate. Low flow is affected by climate changes, topography, geology, soil, and human activities. The geographical location and climatic conditions of Iran cause a lack of rainfall and water scarcity. Therefore, the recognition and analysis of sustainable water resources is the main component in the surface water resources management of Iran. This research has been done with the aim of investigating the characteristics of scientific publications regarding low flow research in Iran and the world and providing a perspective of the current situation and direction of future research.

The data relating to low flow research in environmental; agricultural and biological sciences were retrieved from the Science direct database in the period 1999 to 2022 and SCImago Journal Rank indicator (SJR) from https://www.scimagojr.com as well as scientific information database of Jihad Daneshgahi (SID) and data from Iranian Research Institute for Information Science and Technology (IranDoc). A total of 22875 publications were obtained and with following aspects analysed intensively:(1) Distribution of international low flow-related publications (2) low flow-related publications from Iran; (2) distribution of subject categories; (3) core journals; (4) distribution of Iranian articles related to low flow; (5) frequency of low flow-related articles in Middle East and countries around Iran; (6) research trends. Bibliometric techniques, including citation analysis, five-year impact factor, JCR classification, coverage period and h-index were used to evaluate and interpretation of the results.

The results showed that the general trend of global scientific publications in low-flow research was with a positive slope and a growth rate of 1.52%. Also, the trend of international publications from Iran had a positive slope with a 0.94 coefficient of determination and a growth rate of 1.60%. The results of the subject classification of publications at the global level showed that most publications with 85.75% belong to research papers and the least amount to conference papers and editorials. International papers originating from Iran were of the first order of importance to publications with 90.04%, which has a larger share of the total papers than global papers. The results of the analysis of the most important keywords related to low flow showed that more than 72% of the titles of papers and theses were assigned to "base flow" and "flow duration curve (FDC) keywords ".

This research is a systematic bibliographic analysis of texts related to low flow research publication. By summarizing and analysing the growth curve of publications, it can be concluded that the total number of international publications related to low flow research corresponds to the theoretical fitting line and shows the proportionality of the potential of low flow research in the world with the actual amount. The general result of the analysis of international publications from Iran shows a high potential for low flow research in Iran and indicates a change in the attention of the Iranian scientific community to the publication of articles on the topic of low flow at the international level.