Abstract:
Groundwater contamination derived from human
activities including farming is a serious problem threat-
ening water security in the Northern Province (NP) of
Sri Lanka. Gathering all existing research knowledge
on the province’s water resource base to create a digital
repository is a key action in the 3-year action research
project on water security. Papers gathered in the reposi-
tory showed that water quality, particularly salinity in
groundwater and its contamination, was a prominent
theme in research over the past two decades. Thus, the
scope of this bibliometric study is restricted to publi-
shed work on water quality pertaining to the North
during 1969–2021. Publications listed in four electronic
databases, namely, Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science,
and Google Scholar yielded 118 scholarly publications.
This paper provides an overview of the publication
types and distribution, titles of journals and confer-
ences, authorship, institutions, countries, themes, and
keywords used. Final 20 years of study period saw a
substantial growth in publication rate of water quality
papers in the NP with journal articles and conference
papers being the dominant types at 63% and 35%,
respectively. Authors from 52 different institutions con-
tributed to production of these publications, 93% of
whom represented public sector institutions in
Sri Lanka. University of Jaffna was in the lead position in numeric terms (n = 82), followed by the University
of Peradeniya (n = 28). A significant 81% of the papers
accounted for studies on water contamination, some
indication of the degree of concern for this aspect
among the research community. Around 65% of papers
have been published in a wide range of international
journals, some of which are less well established. This
tendency has implications for the scientific output in
terms of its quality, peer review process, and in turn
also for usefulness of the work in the local context and
in policy making.
