# The Heat Pulse Method for Soil Physical Measurements: A Bibliometric Analysis
## 3 Results and Discussion
### The Most Recognized Journals  
There were 291 journals that publish 1319 studies on the heat pulse method for soil physical measurements. The top 10 journals publishing this topic are generally in the categories of Soil Science, Hydrology and Agriculture, with one in Engineering (i.e., _Geotechnical Testing_ journal), as shown in Figure 3. This is understandable because the main applications of this method are for soil physical measurements (e.g., thermal properties and water content). The journals also cited each other  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c} \hline \hline
**No.** & **Items** & **N** & **TLCS** & **TGCS/C** & **L** & **TLC** \\ \hline \hline \multicolumn{6}{c}{**Top 10 authors**} \\ \hline
1 & [PERSON] (Iowa State University) & 69 & 928 & 2031 & 17 & 145 \\
2 & [PERSON] (China Agriculture University) & 43 & 365 & 825 & 13 & 95 \\
3 & [PERSON] [PERSON] (North Carolina State University) & 29 & - & 668 & 10 & 75 \\
4 & [PERSON] [PERSON] (Kansas State University) & 29 & 835 & 1323 & 7 & 31 \\
5 & [PERSON] [PERSON]. (Oklahoma University) & 24 & - & 901 & 9 & 33 \\
6 & [PERSON] (University Saskatchewan) & 20 & - & 214 & 8 & 33 \\
7 & [PERSON] [PERSON]. (USDA-ARS) & 16 & 33 & 702 & 1 & 1 \\
8 & [PERSON] [PERSON]. (University of California Davis) & 14 & 170 & 980 & 4 & 16 \\
9 & [PERSON] (China Agriculture University) & 14 & 88 & 138 & 6 & 31 \\
10 & [PERSON] [PERSON]. (USDA-ARS) & 14 & 123 & 571 & 5 & 27 \\
11 & [PERSON] [PERSON] (Indian Institute of Technology) & 14 & 42 & 260 & 1 & 3 \\ \hline \multicolumn{6}{c}{**Top 10 organizations**} \\ \hline
1 & USDA ARS (USA) & 87 & 334 & 2698 & 32 & 96 \\
2 & China Agriculture University (China) & 77 & 449 & 1302 & 20 & 124 \\
3 & Chinese Academy of Science (China) & 66 & 227 & 1089 & 28 & 88 \\
4 & Iowa State University (USA) & 62 & 649 & 1642 & 18 & 114 \\
5 & Kansas State University (USA) & 34 & 496 & 992 & 12 & 27 \\
6 & University Saskatchewan (Canada) & 28 & 84 & 347 & 8 & 32 \\
7 & University Arizona (USA) & 25 & 50 & 1120 & 19 & 27 \\
8 & Northwest A\&F University (China) & 23 & 46 & 255 & 13 & 46 \\
9 & Delft University Technology (Netherland) & 21 & 31 & 417 & 8 & 18 \\
10 & North Carolina State University (USA) & 21 & 149 & 666 & 11 & 49 \\ \hline \multicolumn{6}{c}{**Top 10 countries**} \\ \hline
1 & USA & 475 & 2119 & 15,903 & 34 & 312 \\
2 & China & 278 & 846 & 4099 & 24 & 202 \\
3 & Canada & 112 & 176 & 2243 & 17 & 76 \\
4 & Australia & 99 & 487 & 3334 & 20 & 70 \\
5 & Germany & 84 & 106 & 2074 & 28 & 92 \\
6 & France & 82 & 106 & 2543 & 23 & 70 \\
7 & Italy & 78 & 100 & 1808 & 24 & 76 \\
8 & UK & 64 & 30 & 1264 & 16 & 32 \\
9 & Japan & 59 & 211 & 923 & 13 & 48 \\
10 & Spain & 56 & 49 & 996 & 15 & 51 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 1: Top 10 authors, organizations and countries commits to publications on heat pulse method for soil physical measurement with a threshold of minimum five publications per author. The HistCite indices are number of publications (N), total local citation score (TLCS, times to be cited by the 1319 papers) and total global citation score (TGCS, times to be cited by the Web of Science Core Collection). The VOSviewer indices are links (L, the number of collaborations or lines between investigated author/country/organization), total link strength (TLS) and citations (C). Value of TGCS is equal to C (TGCS/C).  
intensively compared to other journals (data not shown), which indicate that these journals are highly recognized by researchers in the community of the heat pulse method.