A Performance Appraisal of a Well-Established Environmental Symposium

The International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS) is a well-established meeting scheduled to gather coral reef scientists from all over the world every four years. The aim of this study was to provide bibliometric assessment of papers presented in 13 rounds of ICRS. To achieve this goal, 30 papers were selected from each round (390 papers in total) and analyzed to determine trends in productivity, collaboration, citations, and study-topic distributions. Nearly all metrics showed an increasing trend. The mean number of citations received by ICRS papers was 26. In terms of study topic distributions, the papers presented at ICRS 2-7, 11, and 12 were to some extent similar in terms of topic distribution while others fall apart., the coral bleaching and non-coral fauna and flora studies were found to be the most common topics of presented papers. Papers presented at ICRS13 were highly devoted to conservations science. The United States and Australia were the most productive countries in the ICRS, and they made significant contributions towards the hosting of sessions.