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Peer-Review Record

Phytoremediation of Heavy Metal Pollution: A Bibliometric and Scientometric Analysis from 1989 to 2018

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2019, 16(23), 4755; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16234755

by Chen Li^1,2,3,4

, Xiaohui Ji^1,2,3,4 and Xuegang Luo^4,*

Reviewer 1: Anonymous

Reviewer 2: Anonymous

Reviewer 3: Anonymous

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2019, 16(23), 4755; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16234755

Submission received: 19 October 2019 / Revised: 22 November 2019 / Accepted: 23 November 2019 / Published: 27 November 2019

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I'm not sure about the suitability of the present manuscript for their publication. In my opinion, it seems a paper more appropriate for a bibliometrics journal than an environmental sciences journal. For example, this review should be more interesting if the authors said which extractants are more suitable according to each soil type or for each element. The same for plant species or soil types (mining, etc.)

Section 3.4 with clusters it's interesting. Still, for example, for cluster #3 about ultramafic soils, it should be more interesting to know who phytorremediators plants have the best results or who elements are the most phytoextracted.

Author Response

Respond: Thank you for your comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Phytoremediation of heavy metal pollution: A bibliometric and scientometric analysis from 1989 to 2018”（ID:ijerph-633196）. Your comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made corrections which we hope meet with approval.

Revised portions are marked in red in the manuscript. The main corrections in the paper and the response to the reviewer's comments are as flowing:

The main purpose of this paper is to help new researchers quickly integrate into the research of phytoremediation of HMs, and help them more easily master the frontiers and hotpots in this field. At the same time, this paper provides a method to quickly understand a certain research field, which not only is limited to the topic of phytoremediation of HMs research but also can be extended to research in environmental science and related disciplines.

We chose “ijerph” as the target journal for our submission mainly for two aspects. First, this manuscript applies CiteSpace software to obtain the research hotspots and research frontiers of the topic of phytoremediation of HMs. This method can be used in other topics in Environment Science. On the other hand, we found some bibliometric related literature in the ijerph's published records. As you said, the plant's species that can be used for HMs pollution remediation and the applicable soil types for these plants have positive implications for the engineering application of this technology. Similarly, the development of genetically engineered microbes/plants and agromining technology, etc., are also the research hotspots and frontiers in this topic. Since space is limited, we touch on these contents only very briefly. Of course, we will pay more attention to this valuable informations in the follow-up study and conduct in-depth discussions separately in our future research.

Our sincere thanks to you again.

Reviewer 2 Report

comment:

This study presents a review about phytoremediation of HMs in the international context from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) (1989–2018). This paper aims to evaluate the knowledge landscape of the phytoremediation of heavy metals (HMs) to explore the research hotspots and trends of this field. Two different processing software applications were used, CiteSpace and Bibliometrix which can help new researchers to review the available research in a certain research field. Here are some comments about the manuscript:

In the “introduction” part, authors should explain other relevant analysis methods and highlight the advantages of bibliometric analysis in this study. While clearly expressing the purpose of the research, the significance of this study shoud be explained. In the “materials and methods” part, it is necessary to explain why select the data used for the analysis were only collected from the following Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC), why not collected from CNKI or others? In the "Results and Discussion" part, the authors just stated the data, the discussion in the article is not very full. It's not a structured discussion. In the "Conclusions" part, the conclusion is poor in summarizing the whole paper. Conclusions should be revised.

Author Response

Revised portions are marked in red in the manuscript. The main corrections in the paper and the response to the reviewer's comments are as flowing:

Drawing on your comments, the introduction was rewritten. In view of the special requirements of CiteSpace for data structure and content, The the data used for the analysis were collected from the following Web of Science Core Collection. For example, CNKI is mainly in Chinese, and the analysis results of CiteSpace may hinder the reading of non-Chinese readers.More importantly, in this study, co-citation analysis was used to obtain research hotspots and research frontiers. But the current version of CiteSpace does not support the reference analysis of CNKI very well. Your comments remind us that it is necessary to explain this issue, we have explained in sections of “Materials and Methods” and “Discussion”, using the red revision display in the manuscript. Thanks, in the manuscript, the “Discussion” were revised. For ease of analysis, the “Discussion” are listed separately and attached to “Results”. Drawing on your comments, the “Conclusions” were revised.

Our sincere thanks to you again.

Reviewer 3 Report

This is a useful and comprehensive review of the literature concerning the phytoremediation of heavy metals. I found the network analysis figure showing nodes of research and how these research topics connect a particularly interesting piece of data analysis. Similarly, the burst analysis was a good way to show how research has evolved over time, both in terms of the academic disciplines contributing to research in phytoremediation and the changes in importance of the topic for each discipline over time. The section on evolution of occurrence bursts of various keywords/groups of keywords was also interesting. However, the data in figure 6-8 was illegible as text is far too small for the reader to interpret. This renders these effectively useless in this format and so the reader relies solely on the interpretations of the authors. The interesting information from this was in the text when certain clusters were described as I could read what the main topics covered in these clusters were e.g. “EDDs deficiency” or “microbial communities”, and the trends of research, but this needs to be clearer from the figures. A number of other suggestions of minor changes are also listed below. With some editing, this would be a paper worth publishing as it would make a valuable contribution to those working in the field of phytoremediation research.

Line 35: rephrase “development of urbanization and industrialization” e.g “urbanization and industrial development” Line 36: rephrase “support the economy and people’s livelihoods” e.g. “support the local and national economy”? Line 37: where the authors first use “HM” abbreviation, instead write in full and give abbreviation in brackets e.g. “Heavy metal (HM)” Line 42: “cause serious risks to the environment” should be re-written e.g. “result in serious negative impacts on the environment” Line 43: rephrase “economic and efficient remediation technology” e.g. “cost-effective and efficient remediation technology” Line 43: rephrase “HM pollution has been receiving worldwide attention” e.g. Line 44: rephrase “cheap and green” e.g. “cheap and sustainable” Line 45: remove “and sustainable” to avoid repetition Line 49: What subject categories? Give examples of the development of key phrases/terminology as research has evolved Line 50: rephrase “received much attention” to “received considerable attention” Line 51-52: rephrase Line 53: Add “Thus, “ to start of sentence (as a consequence of the stage of phytoremediation research, we need this synthesis data) Line 54: rephrase “current status and stay current with the emerging trends” Line 55-56: rephrase “Bibliometric analysis, which is a quantitative method combining mathematical and statistical analyses,” to “Bibliometric analysis - a quantitative method combining mathematical and statistical analyses” Line 59: change “also effectively guides subsequent research” to “can guide subsequent research” Line 59-60: Unnecessary information (e.g. developer/university) included in a definition that doesn’t clearly describe what the software does. Instead, use a definition similar to that given in line 83-84 which is much clearer. Line 99: There appears to be a symbol omitted where you state “In Eq. (1), represents” Line 100: Is there something missing where you state “, and is the number of”? Line 104: rephrase “in the result of network analysis” Line 105: Could you define burstness earlier in the paper? Line 114: Avoid personal pronouns such as “we” Line 116: You don’t clearly state what “pathfinder network scaling pruning” is Line 132: In my opinion, “and so on” is an informal term – change this Line 144-146: I don’t think that including the equation of the line is useful information, at least not in this format (perhaps gradient would be useful?) Line 155-156: This needs to be removed/changed. This is interpretation so belongs in the discussion, but could be seen as overinterpretation of the data as you have not projected what might happen in future and are making assumptions. Line 156-158: This is interpretation of results and so belongs in the discussion. You also provide no evidence to support these claims so could be seen as overinterpretation. Line 159: Although figure 2 is very useful, I do not like that you have three further figures included within the main one. Split these into two figures – one with the main figure ad another with the three separate time periods. Line 171: Repetition of “subject categories” - can you find a different term when you mention this a second time? Do you mean sub-categories? Line 171: You don’t make it clear what you mean by “edge” when you state it is a “93-edge” network – what does this tell me? Line 178: I think that it is worth noting that soil science is also Line 172-179: This is a very interesting diagram; however, some of the descriptive text highlighting main findings from this comes before any information is given on what the colours mean. This needs to come earlier or, even better, be given within the figure itself (see next point). Line 180: The information regarding the colour could be given as a key in the figure itself as it is difficult to follow the text in order to interpret the diagram. The reader should be able to interpret this fairly well from the diagram and title/note alone. Line 204: change personal pronoun “we” Line 208: change text to “also play a vital role” Line 212: Add a line between the table and text Line 231-237: I don’t think that figure 4 (and the text that goes with this) is necessary. This figure is not legible and, in my opinion, does not add anything particularly useful to this paper. Line 265: change personal pronoun “we”. Line 265: “have reason to believe that” is an odd phrase to use here Line 272: remove personal pronoun “we” Line 279: The information in table 4 is far more useful and far easier to understand than figure 4. I do not think that the cluster number is necessary if you remove figure 4. Line 280: I do not like that table 5 is in two halves – it would be better if all 38 lines are in one column rather than split over two. This should not be split over more than one page in the final draft of this paper. Line 283: You give a considerable amount of descriptive text and then provide four tables/figures together, one after another. It would be preferable if the descriptive text for each figure was given and then each figure was shown in turn so that it is easier to follow which section of text is referring to which table/figure. Line 283: Although I appreciate the aesthetic value of the four word cloud maps in figure 5, d in particular, but also a to some extent, is quite difficult to read due to the shape used. Line 286: rephrase “Several keywords burst” Line 286-322: It is unclear which table/figure the authors are using to get this information. It would be useful if these were referred to in the text as appropriate. Please also refer to the previous point about line 283 as these two comments are linked: a lot of text is given here after the figure/table. Line 293: remove personal pronoun “we” Line 296-298 (and rest of document where appropriate): plant species names should be in italics. This goes for all figures/tables that mention plant species and any text that mentions specific species. Line 318-322: This should not be a bullet point. Line 323-393: In my opinion, there is a major issue with this paper in its current form: figure 6, 7 and 8 are illegible and are therefore almost impossible for the reader to follow. These need to be larger and/or simplified, or removed altogether if the information cannot be displayed in an appropriate manner. Line 410: “(Kramer, 2010)” should be referenced in the same way as all other in-text citations Line 460: remove unnecessary comma after “i.e.” Line 485-489: This is a very long sentence Line 490-496: A reference needs to be given for the Kidd paper Line 539: change personal pronoun “we” Line 548: change to “Phytoremediation was considered an eco-friendly, low-cost pollution remediation technology and has received” Line 549-550: Re-write sentence “The subject categories and publications show a rapid increase” – too vague Line 553: Slightly odd terminology “basic, hot and emerging subject categories” – hot categories? Line 572: change personal pronoun “we” Line 572-573: One sentence paragraph – edit this Line 578-622: This section does not require bullet points and would read better without these. Line 596: change start of sentence to “Enhanced HM” Line 608-612: Not particularly useful information Line 625-660: This conclusion is far too long. I also do not like the use of bullet points in a conclusion. This needs to be edited.

Author Response

Revised portions are marked in red in the manuscript. The main corrections in the paper and the response to the reviewer's comments are as flowing:

Line 35: rephrase “development of urbanization and industrialization” e.g “urbanization and industrial development”