Scientometric study of global electron probe microanalysis literature

This paper attempts to highlight the quantitative and qualitative growth and development of the literature on electron probe microanalysis in terms of publication output as per Web of Science (1992–2013) database. A total of 6853 publications and 60,958 citations to these publications were received. The average number of publications published per year was 311.50. The highest number of publications (436) was published in 2013. The highest number of citations (4266) was received in 2004. The average citations per publication were 8.90 and the average impact factor per publication was 1.44. The collaboration trend is toward multi‑authored publications. Majority of the countries prefer to work in a large group in this field. Japan topped the list with 1674 publications followed by People’s Republic of China with 1390 publications, USA with 538 publications, Germany with 499 publications, France with 460 publications, the South Korea with 405 publications, and India with 379 publications. The highest number of publications was published in Materials Sciences with 2763 publications, followed by Chemical Sciences with 1529 and Engineering Sciences. The highly productive institutions were: Chinese Academy of Sciences People’s Republic of China followed by Tohoku University, Japan, Shandong University, People’s Republic of China, University of Antwerp, Belgium and University of Tokyo, Japan.