To What End? A Review of Recent Trends in Microbiologically Influenced Corrosion Research 1990 to 2023

Microbiologically influenced corrosion (MIC) is recognized globally as a significant issue in a wide range of environments and industries, and
many researchers are focusing their efforts on improving the understanding of the fundamental mechanisms involved and investigating ways to
mitigate the associated problems. This paper reports on a study undertaken to look at the details of the nature and content of scientific articles
that are being published by journals/researchers working on MIC. It includes an analysis of trends over time, using journals that have strong links to
publishing work on MIC, by comparing results obtained over the 1990 to 1999, 2000 to 2010, and 2021 to 2023 periods. Some of the key
metrics analyzed are the volume of papers being published, authorship details, main topics of interest, and details of the experiments reported.
The analysis found that there has been an exponential increase in MIC publications, with notable contributions from authors with Chinese
affiliations, researchers are combining and reporting on many more analysis techniques in an individual paper, and that the average duration of
MIC studies has dropped considerably over time (∼70% of tests in recent analysis period had durations of 14 d or less). The implications of the
findings are discussed in relation to current scientific publishing practices, the relevance to field data, and the future of MIC research.
KEY WORDS: bibliometric study, field relevance, microbiologically influenced corrosion, scientific publishing, trends