Abstract: 【Objective】 Analyses of status and trends of rice science in the world based on bibliometrics were performed for providing information to rice researchers and decision makers. 【Method】 The published rice articles from China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan and India as well as other countries during 1998 and 2009 based on the Scopus database were analyzed. 【Result】 A total of 42 307 rice articles were identified from more than 100 countries, meanwhile, the number of cited times for each article and the H indices for each country, affiliations and authors were retrieved. 【Conclusion】 The output of rice articles in the world and the rates of rice articles to the total number of world articles increased year by year, especially in China. In the five countries under study, the cited rate and the H indices of the rice articles, as well as the high cited article rates from the United States and the United Kingdom were the highest, those from Japan were higher than the average values of the world, and those from China and India were below the average values of the world. There were more core authors in Japan, China and the United States. The effects of the rice articles from the International Rice Research Institute, Zhejiang University in China, National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences in Japan and Cornell University in USA were stronger. The research hotspot in rice was molecular biology.

Key words: rice, bibliometric, citationanalysis, Hindex, developmenttrend, scopusdatabase