abstract
More than 5000 titles of publications (papers in journals, transactions and books) on soil micromorphology, or
containing micromorphological research, covering a period from the beginning of the 20th century up to now,
were collected and analysed. The parameters evaluated are number of publications, the number of authors per
publication, languages, publication media (journals, books and congress transactions), research topics and research
centres. For more than 4000 references published between 1900 and 2000 a chronological analysis on
the base of a five-year periodwas carried out. The results presented in a set of tables and graphs illustrate the evolution
of micromorphological research during the 20th century.
The number of papers strongly increased till 1986/90, and thereafter slightly declined. Whereas papers authored
by one scientist prevailed in the early years, multi-authored ones becamemore important in the last decades. The
multilingual tradition that existed in micromorphological publications till the nineteen seventies is practically
completely replaced by a monolingual English one. The wide range of national journals and proceedings used
to publish micromorphologicalmaterial is narrowed to a relative small amount of international journals. The percentage
of papers dealing with soil genesis and classification decreased the last decades, whereas those dealing
with palaeopedology and archaeology show a spectacular increase. In the last decennia little efforts have been
made to develop new concepts and techniques (except for some submicroscopic techniques and image analysis
in the 1970s) and accentwas mostly set on applications. The evolution of the topics coveredmatches general tendencies
in soil science and technical development. Several centres with a regular and considerable output of micromorphological
publications (Bibliometric Identified research Centres, BIC) are identified and discussed. These
BICs in many cases ceased to exist and were dismantled when the leading micromorphologist left.