Introduction
The idea of making a bibliometric study of papers dealing with micromorphology came to my mind when preparing a paper on the history of micromorphology (Stoops, 2009) and a lecture on the past and the future of this discipline for an EGU meeting (Stoops, 2010). I then fully realised that many ideas circulate on the history and evolution of soil micromorphology, but that few or no quantitative data were available.
Bibliometry is a methodology used to analyse quantitatively scientific literature on the basis of bibliographic references. Bibliometric studies have been used and misused since many years by decision makers, such as administrators of universities and research institutes, as an imperfect tool to evaluate the output of individual scientists and institutes. But it can also be a useful tool to study the evolution of a discipline, throughout its history and it is probably the only way to obtain “objective” data. It is evident that such a bibliometric study will only measure the scientific output as far as it is published in accessible journals and books, and not the real evolution and the achievements of scientists, which comprises more than only published papers.
This study is not purely bibliometric in all its aspects. For instance when discussing the centres of micromorphological research, I had to make use of knowledge and data not found in bibliographic references, which make that part less objective. Also the assignment of papers to specific disciplines could not always be completely objective, as papers sometimes concerned more than one subject and the choice had to be based on the title only.
The aim of this contribution is to provide an, as objective as possible, overview of the evolution of soil micromorphology, publication policies and geographic distribution of centres.