Mapping the research on aquaculture. A bibliometric analysis of aquaculture literature

Research on aquaculture is expanding along with the exceptional growth of the sector and has an important role in supporting even further the future developments of this relatively young food production industry. In this paper we examined the aquaculture literature using bibliometrics and computational semantics methods (latent semantic analysis, topic model and co-citation analysis) to identify the main themes and trends in research. We analysed bibliographic information and abstracts of 14,308 scientific articles on aquaculture recorded in Scopus. Both the latent semantic analysis and the topic model indicate that the broad themes of research on aquaculture are related to genetics and reproduction, growth and physiology, farming systems and environment, nutrition, water quality, and health. The topic model gives an estimate of the relevance of these research themes by single articles, authors, research institutions, species and time. With the co-citation analysis it was possible to identify more specific research fronts, which are attracting high number of co-citations by the scientific community. The largest research fronts are related to probiotics, benthic sediments, genomics, integrated aquaculture and water treatment. In terms of temporal evolution, some research fronts such as probiotics, genomics, sea-lice, and environmental impacts from cage aquaculture, are still expanding while others, such as mangroves and shrimp farming, benthic sediments, are gradually losing weight. While bibliometric methods do not necessarily provide a measure of output or impact of research activities, they proved useful for mapping a research area, identifying the relevance of themes in the scientific literature and understanding how research fronts evolve and interact. By using different methodological approaches the study is taking advantage of the strengths of each method in mapping the research on aquaculture and showing in the meantime possible limitations and some directions for further improvements.     

Global knowledge management research: A bibliometric analysis

The present study characterizes the dynamic publication activity of global knowledge management (KM) by data collected through a search restricted to articles in ISI Web of Science.A total of 2727 unique authors had contributed 1407 publications since 1975. The overwhelming majority (2349 or 86%) of them wrote one publication. The productive authors, their contribution and authorship position are listed to indicate their productivity and degree of involvement in their research publications. The sum of research output of the first or responsible authors from USA, UK and Germany reaches 57% of the total productivity. The distribution of articles is rather widespread - they published in 462 titles of serials, spanning 110 Journal Citation Reports subject categories. The higher quality journals make publication of findings more visible. A Pearson's correlation coefficient is statistically found to be significant between citation frequency of article and impact factor of journal, instead of authorship pattern. The results also indicate that R&D expenditures were actually not proportional to research productivity or citation counts. As the subject highly interacts with other disciplines, the field of KM has not yet developed its own body of literature. KM might have been evolving an interdisciplinary theory that is developing at the boundaries of scientific disciplines. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Facebook in educational research: a bibliometric analysis

Facebook has become the object of research in different areas. The present study presents a bibliometric analysis of the scientific literature related to the use of this social network in educational research. To this end, bibliometric techniques were applied in the analysis of scientific articles indexed at the Web of Science Core Collection, from Thomson Reuters, and linked to the research areas of Education/Educational Research. This resulted in the identification of, among others, developments in scientific production, the most important journals that publish papers on the topic, the main authors and the main articles published in the area. The results indicate the growth of scientific production in the area from 2008 onwards, pointing to Computers and Education as the most relevant journal by number of publications (22) and impact factor and indicate that authors from the United States, Australia, Taiwan, United Kingdom and South Africa stand out in the construction of knowledge on educational research applying Facebook. Moreover, the ego-network of the Educational Research area shows that this area coexists with other areas of knowledge in the use of social networking, such as Computer Science, Linguistics and Health Sciences, indicating an interdisciplinary and transversal nature in different areas of research.     

Significant Mexican research in the health sciences: A bibliometric analysis

In the 1970s Mexico started to consolidate its S&T system by training human resources and actively preventing brain drain, mainly by motivating researchers through economic incentives. Considering Bradford"s Law, an analysis of significant Mexican research in the health sciences, i.e., papers published in journals with a high-impact factor which grant a degree of credibility and importance was carried out. Significant papers produced in Mexico show a measure of the country"s productivity, and these papers" citations measure the country"s international impact.     

A bibliometric analysis of publications in computer networking research

Scientometrics - Computer networking is a major research discipline in computer science, electrical engineering, and computer engineering. The field has been actively growing, in terms of both...     

Basic research in biochemistry and molecular biology in China: A bibliometric analysis

Summary This paper attempts to highlight the scientific productivity, productivity age, collaboration trend, domains of contributions of eight Nobel laureates of past and present belonging to different domains of research in science. Also attempts to document the various factors that affect productivity of scientists. No Nobel laureates can be compared with other Nobel laureates as they are an altogether different class of scientific elites and each piece of research is unique by itself.     

A bibliometric and citation analysis of stroke-related research in Taiwan

As the population ages in Taiwan, stroke research has received greater attention in recent years. Strokes have significant impacts on the health and well-being of the elderly. To formulate future research policy, information on stroke publications should be collected. In this research, we studied stroke-related research articles published by Taiwan researchers which were indexed in the Science Citation Index from 1991 to 2005. We found that the quantity of publications has increased at a quicker pace than the worldwide trend. Over the years, there has been an increase in international collaboration, mainly with researchers in the U.S. Article visibility, measured as the frequency of being cited, also increased during the period. It appears that stroke research in Taiwan has become more globally connected and has also improved in quality. The publication output was concentrated in a few institutes, but there was a wide variation among these institutes in the ability to independently conduct research. A wide array of keywords indicated a probable lack of continuity in research. Nevertheless, there was an inverse relationship between stroke mortality and number of published articles in Taiwan. To improve the quality and efficiency of stroke research, continuity in research focuses needs to be maintained, and thus funding should be allocated on a long-term basis to institutes with a proven record of success.     

A bibliometric analysis of research related to ocean circulation

This study is a bibliometric analysis on ocean circulation-related research for the period 1991–2005. Selected documents included “ocean circulation, sea circulation, seas circulation, marine circulation, and circulation ocean” as a part of the title, abstract or keywords. Analyzed parameters included the document type, the article output, the article distribution in journals, the publication activity of countries, and institutes and the authorship. An indicator, citation per publication (CPP) was applied to evaluate the scientific impact of a publication. The relationship between cumulative articles and the year was modeled. Three dominant categories were picked out, and their output increase was modeled. The USA was found to be leading the research with 47% share of total articles, with a CPP up to 5.9. Woods Hole Oceanography Institute in the USA was the most productive institute with a CPP of 6.8. In the citation analysis, a 5th year citation mode was found. A paper life model was applied to compare the cumulative citations increasing rates of different years.     

Cardiovascular disease research in Saudi Arabia: a bibliometric analysis

In the previous three decades, in Saudi Arabia, prevalence of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) has increased and the government has invested significantly in education, healthcare, and research. This study examined the research productivity trends and characterized the types and focus of the all CVD research studies from Saudi Arabia. Data were extracted from studies published up until December 2015 and indexed in the PubMed database. Study eligibility criteria included: (1) sample selected within Saudi Arabia, and (2) CVD or a risk factor for CVD as an outcome, or (3) patients with CVD as study participants. Bibliometric data and study characteristics were extracted from each study; examples include authorship (number, gender, affiliation), journal, publication year, study location, research design, sample size, sample type (general or patient), sample composition (male or female), and sampling strategy (random or non-random). Analysis included 295 studies that pertained to 19 types of CVD; the most common were coronary artery disease (18%), hypertension (16%), stroke (14%), peripheral artery disease (11%), and congenital heart disease (10%). In the past 30 years, the overall productivity, use of a hypothesis-testing design (i.e. case–control, cohort, or trial), international collaborations, and funding increased incrementally. The experimental design constituted only 3% of all studies and less than 10% of the hypothesis-testing design studies. The scientific literature from Saudi Arabia addressed many of the CVD types. However, there were very few experimental studies conducted to date. Funding agencies should consider patronizing more studies with a hypothesis-testing design.     

A bibliometric analysis of world volatile organic compounds research trends

This study explores a bibliometric approach to quantitatively assessing current research trends on volatile organic compounds, by using the related literature in the Science Citation Index (SCI) database from 1992 to 2007. The articles acquired from such literature were concentrated on the general analysis by scientific output, the research performances by countries, institutes, and collaborations, and the research trends by the frequency of author keywords, words in title, words in abstract, and keywords plus. Over the past years, there had been a notable growth trend in publication outputs, along with more participation and collaboration of countries and institutes. Research collaborative papers had shifted from the national inter-institutional to the international collaboration. Benzene, toluene, and formaldehyde were the three kinds of VOCs concerned mostly. Detection and removing, especially by adsorption and oxidation, of VOCs were to be the orientation of all VOCs research in the next few years.     

Gender differences in research productivity: A bibliometric analysis of the Italian academic system

The literature dedicated to the analysis of the difference in research productivity between the sexes tends to agree in indicating better performance for men. Through bibliometric examination of the entire population of research personnel working in the scientific-technological disciplines of Italian university system, this study confirms the presence of significant differences in productivity between men and women. The differences are, however, smaller than reported in a large part of the literature, confirming an ongoing tendency towards decline, and are also seen as more noticeable for quantitative performance indicators than other indicators. The gap between the sexes shows significant sectorial differences. In spite of the generally better performance of men, there are scientific sectors in which the performance of women does not prove to be inferior.     

The evolution of data science and big data research: A bibliometric analysis

Scientometrics - In this study the evolution of Big Data (BD) and Data Science (DS) literatures and the relationship between the two are analyzed by bibliometric indicators that help establish the...     

A bibliometric study of service innovation research: based on complex network analysis

In the paper, we apply small world complex network theory to analyze scientific research in the field of service innovation, and discover its research focuses. Our study considers the key words and subject categories of the publications as actors to map keyword co-occurrence network and subject category co-occurrence network, and compare them with their corresponding random binary networks to judge whether these complex networks have the characteristics of small world network, in order to find the hot issues in the field by the small world network analysis. We discuss the knowledge structure in the field through analyzing 437 papers that were searched from Web of Science database over the period 1992–2011. We find that case study, service industry, service quality, market orientation, new product development, and knowledge management were the most popular keywords of the field, and also show the dynamic development of the research focuses in recent 10 years. The researchers who made most contribution in a certain field are also found out. It is concluded that there were more researchers who did investigation about service innovation in the category of Business and Economics, Engineering, Public Administration, Operations Research and Management Science, and Computer Science than those in other categories. The study suggests a quantitative method to analyze trends of scientific research in a certain field, and presents some directions of research mainstream to the researchers who may be interested in the service innovation.     

International research collaboration in Africa: a bibliometric and thematic analysis

It is widely recognised that science in Africa will benefit from international research collaboration (IRC), and therefore studies have been done on IRC in Africa (hereafter: Africa-related IRC research). However, there is no information on the development of Africa-related IRC research, the geographical location of the scientists interested in the topic, the visibility of the literature and the themes researched. This information makes it possible to understand relevant aspects in the context of IRC in Africa, which are useful for identifying IRC strengths, weaknesses and opportunities. It also allows paving the way for future research on this topic. Using discipline–specific terms, bibliometric, and thematic analysis, I collected the literature on Africa-related IRC research indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection (WoS). The results showed that the number of publications on the topic has increased, few African countries have researched the topic, a third of the publications were written exclusively by African scientists, and the topic has high visibility. The panoply of publications revealed that patterns, driving factors, effects, networks, asymmetries, and policies concerning IRC were the main themes researched.

     

A bibliometric analysis of research on proteomics in Science Citation Index Expanded

A bibliometric analysis was conducted to evaluate the global scientific output of proteomics research in the Science Citation Index Expanded from 1995 to 2010. The document types, languages, journals, categories, countries, and institutions were analyzed to obtain publication patterns. Research focuses and trends were revealed by a word cluster method related to author keywords, title, abstract, and KeyWords Plus. Bradford’s Law and the correlation between keywords and institutions were identified to look deeper into the nature works. Proteomics and Journal of Proteome Research published the most articles in proteomics research. The researchers focused on the categories of biochemical research methods, and biochemistry and molecular biology. The USA and Harvard University were the most productive country and institution, respectively, while China was the fastest-growing country due to the support by Chinese government. The distribution of author keywords provided the important clues of hot issues. Results showed that mass spectrometry and two-dimensional gel electrophoresis had been the most frequently used research methods in the past 16 years; and cancer proteomics had a strong potential in the near future. Furthermore, biologists contributed significantly to proteomics research, and were more likely to co-operate with medical scientists.     

State of research and future research tendencies in lean healthcare: a bibliometric analysis

The application of Lean Philosophy in a healthcare environment is still a relatively new field of research, but there already exists a considerable amount of literature on the topic. This article structures, analyzes and interprets the data of articles on Lean Healthcare from 2002 through 2015 bibliometrically. The databases used in order to realize the analysis are the main sources for citation data available: Elsevier’s Scopus and Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science. The scientific contribution of this article lies in structuring the literature on Lean Healthcare and summarizing future research proposals. Thereby it encourages the review and consolidation of existing directions in this field of research and the exploration of new ones. With respect to the article’s applied contribution it helps hospitals and professionals which want to apply Lean Healthcare to deal with uncertainties and challenges before or during its implementation by granting easy access to the literature. It also allows adapting suitable findings of major publications for the practical implementation with the goal to improve the patient experience. As results of this bibliometric analysis it was found that J.E. Bassham and D.I. Ben-Tovim share the first place as most cited authors in Lean Healthcare and the Linköpings Universitet is the most cited institution. With respect to countries, the United States take the first rank. The most cited article is Trends and approaches in lean healthcare by L. Brandão de Souza which was published in the most cited journal, namely Leadership in Health Services. Four main tendencies for future research possibilities in Lean Healthcare were identified: Evaluate the implementation; Amplify basic knowledge; Investigate challenges and success stories; Expand the focus.     

A bibliometric analysis of solar power research from 1991 to 2010

A bibliometric analysis was performed on solar power-related research between 1991 and 2010 in journals of all the subject categories of the Science Citation Index. “Solar cell”, “solar energy”, “solar power”, “solar radiation” and “solar thermal” were selected as keywords to search in a part of the title, abstract or keywords. The trends were analyzed with the retrieved results in the publication type and language, characters of scientific output, publication distribution by countries, subject categories and journals, and the frequency of title-words and keywords used. Articles on solar power showed a significant growth along with more participation of countries, while the percentage of international papers reduced. The USA was the country with the most related articles and the most-frequent partner among all the international collaborative articles. Articles of Mainland China and South Korea grew much faster than other countries in the latest 5 years. Chemistry and material fields gradually became the mainstream of the solar power research. Synthetically analyzing three kinds of keywords, it showed that thin film solar photovoltaic technology was a hot spot of the solar power research in the past 20 years. “Dye-sensitized solar cell” and “organic” had extremely high increasing rates, which indicated that more attention was paid to kinds of organic solar cells. It could be concluded that the materials of solar cells would be the emphasis of solar power research in the twenty-first century.     

Profile of the Mexican health sciences elite: A bibliometric analysis of research performance

The most prestigious award in Mexico, the “National Prize for Science and Art” has been awarded to 33 health scientists. An exercise was carried out to assess their performance to answer the question: why them? The laureates' profile was based on data retrieved from MEDLINE andScience Citation Index Expanded available on the WWW as well as the ISI's 15-year (1981–1995) cumulative impact factor lists. The laureates published 2,049 papers and were cited 50,834 times. Our results showed the scientific pre-eminence of laureates. We concluded that bibliometric data could complement other indicators of research performance. Bibliometrics could insure the Prize committee against error and the operationalization of the Matthew Effect could be minimized to honor only the most creative researchers.