Agrifood research in Europe: a global perspective

The paper has the general aim of assessing the worldwide research activity in agricultural and food science and technology as it is reflected by the mainstream journal literature. The specific research questions were as follows: (1) What is the position of the European Research Area (ERA) represented by 33 countries in this study, on the world map of agrifood science publications? (2) Which countries are influential and what is their position? (3) Are there any specific European strengths and weaknesses by subfields of agrifood science? Overall, assessed by the total number of publications, the European Research Area (ERA), represented by 33 countries in this study, is in a dominant position on the world map of agrifood science. However, agrifood publications from the United States are more influential (judged by the average citation rates per paper). Correlation has been found between economic power and agrifood science publications: this is true not only for the total number of papers, but also for influence (measured by, again, the citation rates). Within Europe, the UK, Germany, France, Spain and the Netherlands dominate the agrifood research fields also in terms of citations. The Scandinavian countries, the Benelux states and Switzerland manage to produce influential papers across several fields of agrifood science. The EU??s New Member States??a populous area??together have less than 10% share in Europe??s agrifood publications and in citations they account for a 3?C4% portion only. It seems that deepening of the integration of the national research systems in the European Research Area is desirable to have more impact of European agrifood research viewed from a global perspective.