Bibliometric regularity of ecological literatures published in Chinese journals

To describe the trends and regularity of a discipline from a point of bibliometric view is a necessary supplement for the development of a new discipline. We selected 37 sub-disciplines of ecology as Keyword and searched for relevant literatures of past 15 years in 《VIP. Chinese Scientific and technological Journal Database》. It was found that the number of ecological literatures showed an exponential increase and the majority of literature increase was concentrated in six sub-disciplines. However, the proportion of literature in eco-economy and agriculture ecology was declining yearly. The number of literature in five sub-disciplines was small but increased rapidly in recent years. The number of authors in the literature showed a power function. A high-yield author could be defined by the publication of 10 papers. Main organizations that were affiliated with ecological publications were agricultural and forestry universities, universities, and institutes of Chinese Academy of Sciences. The distribution of ecological literatures in periodicals followed the Bradford Regularities.