20,275 papers on groundwater–surface water interactions. 53 years of research.

A genuinely clever approach by Irvine et al. (2024) to go beyond a simple review by analysing the past and evolution of an uprising scientific field. The Figure extracted from the paper visualises the last two decades of groundwater–surface water interaction research as a scientific network. Each node represents a paper, while clusters reveal the field’s major research themes. The highlighted studies stand out not because they received the most citations, but because they connect otherwise separate areas of research. In network science, this is known as betweenness centrality—a measure of how strongly a paper influences the flow of knowledge across an entire scientific field. One insight that really stood out to us is that scientific impact is not only about citation counts. Some papers become influential because they connect previously separate research themes and open up entirely new directions for future work.

Three priorities emerge for the next generation of research:

• IoT sensors, remote sensing and uncrewed vehicles
• Upscaling site-specific findings to management-relevant scales
• extend and strengthen the multidisciplinary collaboration

A great example of how bibliometric analysis can turn thousands of papers into a roadmap for future research.

 Irvine DJ, Singha K, Kurylyk BL, et al (2024) Groundwater-Surface water interactions research: Past trends and future directions. Journal of Hydrology 644:132061. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2024.132061