Bibliography of Indonesia Geology

INTRODUCTION

The updated 4.1 edition of the 'Bibliography of the geology of Indonesia and surrounding areas' is now available. For key updates since the April 2011 3rd edition, please see What's New. The number of references has grown from about 7,000 titles in the 2009 first edition to over 14,250 titles in July 2012, with significant additional annotation and corrections.

The complete bibliography is a 'pdf' file of 1380 pages and can be downloaded here (recommended if searching for authors or keywords in tittles). If interested only in certain areas, individual chapters with summaries of geology and recommended reading can be downloaded from the web pages dealing with these areas.

The selection of illustrations in this website is limited to those that are no longer under copyright restrictions. Newer, better versions of many of these figures may exist in the literature.

Download pdf - COMPLETE BIBLIOGRAPHY (12.9 MB)

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Purpose

The purpose of this ongoing project has been to promote awareness of the vast amount of material published on Indonesia geology and to encourage its use. In our experience searches of existing 'worldwide' geoscience literature data bases like GeoRef, etc., yielded only a fraction of all available papers on Indonesia. Some Indonesia- focused academic and government data bases exist, but are also not comprehensive and generally have access restrictions.

Many of the papers listed here are hard to find or have been 'forgotten'. Lack of access to geoscience libraries, foreign language barriers, cost of purchasing and available time for reading causes much of this valuable geoscience heritage to be under-utilized. Many of the 'old' papers still contain information that cannot be found elsewhere, or research results that would be difficult to replicate today.

This is a reminder to the geoscience community that 'we are standing on strong shoulders' and reading is important. The publications in this listing contain the results of work by thousands of geologists, tens of thousands of men-years and many billions of $$ on survey work and studies ! And remember: the most recent paper on a topic is not always the most useful.

Check for periodic updates ! Last updated November 2011

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Numbers of papers by chapter / area

Table I below shows the chapters and numbers of titles in the bibliography (status as of November 2011)

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE GEOLOGY OF INDONESIA AND SURROUNDING AREAS

GEOLOGY OF INDONESIA (Total 7249)	Indonesia Regional (732)	Indonesia Regional	732
	Sumatra - Sundaland (1455)	Sumatra	1190
		Sunda Shelf - Tin Islands	174
		Natuna	91
	Java - Madura (1468)	Java - Madura	1468
	Kalimantan (1013)	Kalimantan	934
		Makassar Straits	79
	Sulawesi (646)	Sulawesi	588
		Buton	58
	Moluccas (1269)	N Moluccas (Halmahera, etc)	122
		Banggai-Sula	62
		Seram-Buru	134
		Banda Sea - E Banda	136
		E Sunda - W Banda Arc	147
		Sumba - Savu	87
		Timor - Timor Sea	581
	West Papua (666)	West Papua	576
		Misool	54
		Arafura	36
GEOLOGY OF AREAS AROUND INDONESIA (Total 3337)	SE Asia	SE Asia Regional	531
	W, NW	Andaman Sea	91
		Malay Peninsula / Basin	284
		SE Asia Mainland	159
		South China Sea	137
	N	Philippines	293
		S Philippines ( Sula Sea, Celebes Sea)	79
		North Borneo	570
	NE, E, S	SW Pacific, E Australia	169
		Papua New Guinea	646
		Australia NW Shelf	378
SPECIAL TOPICS (Total 2448)		Volcanism	211
		Modern Environments	184
		Carbonates, Reefs	158
	Paleontology - Biostrat	General, Quaternary	236
		Tertiary	672
		Pre-Tertiary	228
		Hominids - Pleist. mammals	288
	Hydrocarbons, Coal	Hydrocarbon occurrences	77
		Source rocks, oils and gas	113
		Coal	126
	Historic Interest , etc.		175
November 2011		Total Papers: 13,054

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Publication trends through time

As illustrated by Figures 1, 2 and 3 the numbers of publications, languages, focus areas and research topics changed dramatically trough time, reflecting changes in political situations, economic drivers and scientific developments over the last 150+ years:

(1) 1850-1905: Geoscience publications from this era are mainly summaries of mineral, coal and oil exploration work or geological reconnaissance surveys. They are generally short, poorly illustrated papers in Dutch and in German, and mainly on western Indonesia. Exceptions to this rule were the impressive first regional descriptions and maps of Verbeek on Sumatra, SE Kalimantan and Java-Madura.

(2) 1905-1940: This was a period of significant expansion of mapping and other geological studies, with many new hydrocarbon and metals discoveries. A systematic mapping program of Sumatra and Java was started by the government geological survey. There was an increase in industry, government and academic reconnaissance surveys into Eastern Indonesia and New Guinea. Many large volumes on surface geology, paleontology, petrography, etc., were published of all parts of Indonesia. Principal languages were still Dutch and German, but English became increasingly common in the 1930's. Due to its detail and quality of documentation, much of the descriptive data from this era is still valuable today.

(3) 1940-1970: Survey and publishing activity had already started to slow down during the Great Depression of the 1930's, but came to almost complete standstill between1940-1950 (World War II, Revolutionary years), followed by very low levels of research and publishing until the late 1960's. The oldest geology paper in Indonesian in the bibliography is from 1962.

(4) 1970-2011: With the change to the 'New Order' came an expansion of investment, exploration and research, with spectacular growth in resource-related and academic publishing after 1975. This bibliography suggests the total number of geoscience publications on Indonesia peaked in the mid-1990's. Languages of publications are now primarily English, followed by Indonesian.

Fig. 1- Number of publications on the geology of Indonesia through time, by areas, using a subset of 6,360 out of 11,300 titles that deal specifically with locations in Indonesia. The sharp dip on the right is an artifact of the shorter reporting period (2010-early 2011 instead of full five years)

 

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Fig. 2- Number of Indonesia geology publications through time, by language. Prior to 1940 the dominant languages of publication were Dutch and German, while English has been the dominant language after 1945. Indonesian language papers have been the second most common language of publication since the 1970's. Actual percentage more than shown here, as many papers published in Indonesia could not be captured due to limited availability)

 

Fig. 3- Number of Indonesia geology publications through time, by nationality. The number of papers with Indonesian nationals as principal or sole author gradually increased since 1955 until around 1990, when the number of papers authored by Indonesian nationals started to equal or exceed the combined foreign output.