12th ISCO Conference Beijing 2002 Visualization of Soil Erosion Research in a Knowledge Map A. Zartl 1 , A. Klik 2 and E. Schiebel 1 1 ARC Seibersdorf Research GmbH, Department of Technology Management, Austria E-mail: angelika.zartl@arcs.ac.at 2 University of Agricultural Sciences Vienna (BOKU), Austria, Department of Hydraulics and Rural Water Management Abstract: Soil erosion research is a popular topic in soil science that appears in conjunction with several other topics like soil and/or water conservation, soil physics, - chemistry and – biology and others. A request for the term “soil erosion” on CAB abstract CD, dated from January 1992 to January 2001, resulted in 15.531 articles. According to the publication year on average 1.639 articles are published per year. Objective of this paper is to analyze literature of soil erosion research with bibliometric methods and to achieve the following targets: 1) give an overview of the various sub-themes that arise in conjunction with soil erosion research; 2) find potential missing research areas; 3) show co-operations of different science areas and countries. To fulfill these objectives a visualization and analysis tool, called BibTechMon is used. This tool helps to get a quick overview of great amounts of literature, find conceptual interactions and show interactions of content. Results are various knowledge maps that show the content of soil erosion research and their interactions. Keywords: soil erosion, bibliometric analysis, visualization, decision support system 1 Introduction Today’s society is confronted with an increasing amount of information and an easier access to knowledge. Internet, online databases and online libraries have dramatically improved the worldwide availability of information. On CAB abstracts on average 1.639 articles concerning soil erosion are published per year. It is impossible to read all those publications and especially for scientists who are getting involved into a new subject it is hard to filter this information flood. In the information technology tools are developed to structure and filter information and work out the topic specific data. Analysis of information according to importance, temporal distribution and other relevant parameters is necessary to handle the knowledge. Bibliometric methods were developed for analysis of data by surveying literature and/or patent information from databases. Relations between technological innovation, different methods of application, institutes and experts can be determined using bibliometrics. Upcoming technologies or trend analyses of future developments can be identified. Bibliometric analyses are used for strategic decision support as well as for daily work in R&D (Grupp et al., 1990). One of the well known relational bibliometric methods is the co-word analysis. A combination of bibliometric methods to analyze and information visualization to visualize information can be used to handle all type of information. 2 Objectives Objective of this paper is to analyze information, especially literature information on soil erosion research with bibliometric methods and to achieve the following target objectives: