Quo Vadis Europe, The Netherlands and Australia with regards to MIC research?

Bibliometric studies are very important as they can act like a compass to show where the research is heading on to, Quo Vadis!

The bibliometric technique becomes a vital tool to show the overall global state of MIC research. This can lead into creating patters that will assist researchers to highlight who is doing what and how is doing it. ?

To the best of my knowledge there are two bibliometric studies about MIC research:

1. S.J. Hashemi, N.Bak ,F. Khan , K. Hawboldt , L. Lefsrud , J. Wolodko” Bibliometric analysis of microbiologically influenced corrosion (MIC) of oil and gas engineering systems”, Corrosion. April 2018;74(4):468-486
2. M. Akin, T.L. Skovhus, J. Knisz, S. P. Eyduran,” Bibliometric Analysis on Microbiologically Influenced Corrosion in Oil and Gas Systems”, 9th international symposium on applied microbiology and molecular biology in oil systems (ISMOS-9), UK.

I studied various aspects of the 2018 study in one of my books, “Reza Javaherdashti, Farzaneh Akvan “Failure Modes, Effects and Causes of Microbiologically Influenced Corrosion: Advanced Perspectives and Analysis”, Elsevier, 2020”.

Both studies do carry very important aspects but let us just focus on one aspect of it: the status of countries in 2018 report and in 2023 report with regards to where they are standing regarding producing research papers related to micr4obiologically influenced corrosion (MIC).

Both reports show that the USA, China and Canada are among top contributors of MIC research papers with The USA holding its first rank . The US takes the lead with a meaningful, very significant superiority to the other two rivals. In both studies, however, Canada is far left behind in comparison with China, a significant alarm!

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Let us take two countries as benchmarks to see what they have done during the years between 2018 and 2023:

The Netherlands: This country stand the 18th country (out of 29 countries that have been studie3d) contributing to MIC research papers in 2018.In 2023, however, The Netherlands has been ranked 19th out of 19 countries that have been studied.

Australia: In 2018, Australia was ranked 6th whereas in 2023, it was ranked 8th.

The two top-sitting countries (after Canada) in 2018 report were France and The UK but in 2023, they were India and Brazil.

Overall,

a) The USA is doing well, keep on the good work however be careful of China!

b) Canada, move faster and try to do better, much better!

c) Countries like Australia and The Netherlands: what is happening to you guys?!!

c) Europe, are you sleeping?!