Statistical Analysis of Highly Cited Papers of Soils during 2003 to 2012 and Its Revelation

To steadily improve academic quality and influence of the journal named Soils, to help the head decide the development direction of the journal, using the Chinese Citation Database and China Academic Journal Network Publishing Database, the highly cited papers(citation frequency ≥20) of Soils from 2003 to 2012 were analyzed. The results showed that review articles had higher proportion, more than 30% in 2003 and 2004, and then its proportion reduced, it only accounted for 10.5%-16.2% in 2009-2012. There were 254 highly cited papers, accounting for 16.1%of published article volume. The highly cited papers mostly published in 2003-2006, accounting for 85.5% of the total highly cited papers, average citation rates of per article being 38.4-47.8. The authors publishing ≥4 highly cited papers were from same institution named Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and mostly were corresponding author. The number of first institution publishing ≥2 highly cited papers was 24, covering the whole country. Top 20 of the highly cited papers were mainly review articles, focusing on soil pollution, soil microorganisms and soil obstacles. So, the editorial department should on the one hand pay attention to protect the existing core authors to keep the journal develop sustainably, and on the other hand try hard to break the regional restrictions, attract articles, especially the originality, prospective review articles from the well-known experts and his team in hot fields.