Chronic anthropogenic disturbances in ecology: a bibliometric approach

Chronic anthropogenic disturbances is a research topic of increasing interest for ecologists. We conducted a bibliometric assesssment about the literature on this subject in oder to identify some gaps concerning the ecological approaches, the kinds of organisms, disturbances, environments, and ecological zones studied, and to understand the factors influencing the citations and self-citations behaviours in this field. We examined the additive effect of the auhors-related variables (the hightest h-index among the authors, authors’country human development indice, and the hightest number of papers about chronic disturbances published by the authors), Journal CitiScore and the kind of the papers (original or review) on the citation rate of the papers. The additive effect of the same authors-related variables also was tested on self-citation rate. Most of the papers about chronic disturbances are about the effects of livestock grazing or forest products collect activities over plant communities, or the effects of pollution or fishery related activities over benthic invertebrates. The most important determinant of citation rate of the papers about chronic disturbances is the Journal CiteScore, followed by writing reviews papers. The authors who are building this research line are who most use self-citations, and the h-index also affected positively the self-citation rate. Authors from low human development indice countries undertake more self-citations Latin American researches are builindg a research line about chronic disturbance, but it seems they face dificulty in get acknowledege through citations. Therefore we propoused some ways to overcome it, such as to publish in high impact journals or expand their research lines.