Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-2lccl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T03:26:42.045Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A bibliometric analysis of past and emergent trends in animal welfare science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

R Freire  and
CJ Nicol
R Freire*
Affiliation:
Institute for Land, Water and Society, School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, Charles Sturt University, Boorooma Street, Wagga Wagga, NSW 2650, Australia
CJ Nicol
Affiliation:
Royal Veterinary College, University of London, 4 Royal College Street, London NW1 0TU, UK
*
* Contact for correspondence: rfreire@csu.edu.au
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A bibliometric analysis was undertaken to chart the development of animal welfare (AW) science as a whole, and of the individuals, organisations and countries that have had most academic impact to date. Publication data were collected from the Web of Science for the year range 1968-2017 and by-hand pre-processing of the data was undertaken to identify reviews and original research articles on AW. VOSviewer was used to create bibliometric networks. There has been a 13.3% annual growth in AW publications in the last 50 years with Animal Welfare and Applied Animal Behaviour Science the most frequent publishers of AW publications. Farm animals continue to dominate the subject of AW research and comparison of network visualisations for five key species suggested possible gaps in the research, such as relatively little emphasis on emotion research for some farm animals and little research on inherited disorders in dogs. However, keyword analysis indicated a recent broadening of AW findings to include other international contexts, such as conservation and sustainability. Highly cited review articles were grouped into five clusters with affective state (ie emotions, moods) and fish welfare the most recent topics. Almost all core authors of original research articles study farm animals, though in the last ten years other topics, such as consumer attitudes and wildlife, have emerged as highly cited areas of original research articles. Network analysis of organisations revealed the University of Bristol, UK as the main publisher of original research articles. Citation analysis indicated that many low-cited articles were originating from Germany and were published in German journals, suggesting that many worthwhile results and opinions on AW may be being missed by other researchers due to a language barrier. Several limitations of bibliometric analysis to generate an overview of AW science were identified, including the challenge of how to search and extract all the relevant publications in this discipline. In conclusion, animal welfare science is still in an exponential phase of growth which will bring opportunities, such as for the publication of new journals, but also challenges. The insights generated by this study suggest bibliometric analysis to be a useful addition to other approaches investigating the trends and concepts of animal welfare.

Keywords

animal welfareanimal well-beingbibliometricscitation analysispublicationsscientometrics
Type
Articles
Information
Animal Welfare , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , November 2019 , pp. 465 - 485
Copyright
© 2019 Universities Federation for Animal Welfare

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Albright, JL 1998 History and future of animal welfare science. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science 1: 145–166. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327604jaws0102_5CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barnard, CJ and Hurst, JL 1996 Welfare by design: the natural selection of welfare criteria. Animal Welfare 5(4): 405–433Google Scholar
Barton, BA 2002 Stress in fishes: A diversity of responses with particular reference to changes in circulating corticosteroids. Integrative and Comparative Biology 42: 517–525. https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/42.3.517CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beattie, VE, O’Connell, NE and Moss, BW 2000 Influence of environmental enrichment on the behaviour, performance and meat quality of domestic pigs. Livestock Production Science 65: 71–79. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0301-6226(99)00179-7CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beaver, BV, Reed, W, Leary, S, McKiernan, B, Bain, F, Schultz, R, Bennett, BT, Pascoe, P, Shull, E, Cork, LC, Francis-Floyd, R, Amass, KD, Johnson, R, Schmidt, RH, Underwood, W, Thornton, GW and Kohn, B 2001 2000 Report of the AVMA panel on euthanasia. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association 218: 669–696. https://doi.org/10.2460/javma.2001.218.669Google Scholar
Beerda, B, Schilder, MB, Bernadina, W, Van Hooff, JA, De Vries, HW and Mol, JA 1999b Chronic stress in dogs subjected to social and spatial restriction II. Hormonal and immunological responses. Physiology & Behavior 66: 243–254. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0031-9384(98)00290-XCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beerda, B, Schilder, MB, Janssen, NS and Mol, JA 1996 The use of saliva cortisol, urinary cortisol, and catecholamine meas-urements for a noninvasive assessment of stress responses in dogs. Hormones and Behaviour 30: 272–279. https://doi.org/10.1006/hbeh.1996.0033CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beerda, B, Schilder, MB, van Hooff, JA, de Vries, HW and Mol, JA 1998 Behavioural, saliva cortisol and heart rate respons-es to different types of stimuli in dogs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 58: 365–381. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0168-1591(97)00145-7CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beerda, B, Schilder, MB, van Hooff, JA, De Vries, HW and Mol, JA 1999a Chronic stress in dogs subjected to social and spa-tial restriction I. Behavioral responses. Physiology & Behavior 66:233–242. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0031-9384(98)00289-3CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blokhuis, HJ, Jones, RB, Veissier, I and Miele, M 2013 Improving farm animal welfare: science and society working together, the Welfare Quality® approach. Wageningen Academic Publishers: Wageningen, The Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.3920/978-90-8686-770-7CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bornmann, L and Mutz, R 2015 Growth rates of modern sci-ence: A bibliometric analysis based on the number of publications and cited references. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 66: 2215–2222. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23329CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borsi, B and Schubert, A 2011 Agrifood research in Europe: A global perspective. Scientometrics 86: 133–154. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-010-0235-3CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyack, KW, Klavans, R, Sørensen, AA and Ioannidis, JP 2013 A list of highly influential biomedical researchers,1996–2011. European Journal of Clinical Investigation 43: 1339–1365. https://doi.org/10.1111/eci.12171CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brambell, R 1965 Report of the Technical Committee to Enquire Into the Welfare of Animals Kept Under Intensive Livestock Husbandry Systems. HM Stationery Office: London, UKGoogle Scholar
Broom, DM 1991 Animal welfare: concepts and measurement. Journal of Animal Science 69: 4167–4175. https://doi.org/10.2527/1991.69104167xCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Broom, DM 2011 A history of animal welfare science. Acta Biotheoretica 59: 121–137. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10441-011-9123-3CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Broom, DM 2014 Sentience and Animal Welfare. CABI: Wallingford, UK. https://doi.org/10.1079/9781780644035.0000CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broom, DM and Fraser, AF 2015 Domestic Animal Behaviour and Welfare. CABI: Wallingford, UK. https://doi.org/10.1079/9781780645391.0000CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caporale, V, Alessandrini, B, Villa, PD and del Papa, S 2005 Global perspectives on animal welfare: Europe. Revue Scientifique et Technique-Office International des Epizooties 24: 567–577. https://doi.org/10.20506/rst.24.2.1594CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dawkins, MS 1990 From an animal's point of view: motivation, fitness, and animal welfare. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13: 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00077104CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dawkins, MS 2006 A user's guide to animal welfare science. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 21: 77–82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2005.10.017CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dawkins, MS, Donnelly, CA and Jones, TA 2004 Chicken wel-fare is influenced more by housing conditions than by stocking density. Nature 427: 342. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature02226CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Azevedo, CS, Cipreste, CF and Young, RJ 2007 Environmental enrichment: a GAP analysis. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 102: 329–343. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applan-im.2006.05.034CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Bellis, N 2009 Bibliometrics and Citation Analysis: From the Science Citation Index to Cybermetrics. Scarecrow Press: Maryland, USAGoogle Scholar
Ellegaard, O and Wallin, JA 2015 The bibliometric analysis of scholarly production: how great is the impact. Scientometrics 105:1809–1831. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-015-1645-zCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fraser, D 2008 Understanding animal welfare. Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica 50: S1. https://doi.org/10.1186/1751-0147-50-S1-S1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fraser, D, Weary, DM, Pajor, EA and Milligan, BN 1997 A scientific conception of animal welfare that reflects ethical con-cerns. Animal Welfare 6: 187–205Google Scholar
Goulart, VD, Azevedo, PG, van de Schepop, JA, Teixeira, CP, Barcante, L, Azevedo, CS and Young, RJ 2009 GAPs in the study of zoo and wild animal welfare. Zoo Biology 28: 561–573. https://doi.org/10.1002/zoo.20285Google Scholar
Hamel, RE 2007 The dominance of English in the international scientific periodical literature and the future of language use in sci-ence. Aila Review 20: 53–71. https://doi.org/10.1075/aila.20.06hamCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrison, R 1964 Animal Machines: The New Factory Farming Industry. Vincent Stuart Publishers Ltd: London, UKGoogle Scholar
Hemsworth, PH, Mellor, DJ, Cronin, GM and Tilbrook, AJ 2015 Scientific assessment of animal welfare. New Zealand Veterinary Journal 63: 24–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/00480169.2014.966167CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ioannidis, JP 2006 Concentration of the most-cited papers in the scientific literature: analysis of journal ecosystems. PLoS One 1: e5. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0000005CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kestin, SC, Knowles, TG, Tinch, AE and Gregory, NG 1992 Prevalence of leg weakness in broiler chickens and its relationship with genotype. Veterinary Record 131: 190–194. https://doi.org/10.1136/vr.131.9.190CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kirchner, MK, Košťál, Ľ, Bilčík, B and Winckler, C 2017 Mapping farm animal welfare research in an enlarged Europe: international collaboration, bibliometric output, research resources and relation to economic indices. Scientometrics 113:909–922. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2505-9CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knowles, TG, Kestin, SC, Haslam, SM, Brown, SN, Green, LE, Butterworth, A, Pope, SJ, Pfeiffer, D and Nicol, CJ 2008 Leg disorders in broiler chickens: prevalence, risk factors and pre-vention. PLoS One 3: e1545. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0001545CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kruip, TA and Den Daas, JHG 1997 In vitro produced and cloned embryos: effects on pregnancy, parturition and offspring. Theriogenology 47: 43–52. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0093-691X(96)00338-XCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landhuis, E 2016 Scientific literature: Information overload. Nature 535: 457–458. https://doi.org/10.1038/nj7612-457aCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lawrence, AB 2008 Applied animal behaviour science: past, present and future prospects. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 115: 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2008.06.003CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Masiga, WN and Munyua, SJM 2005 Global perspectives on animal welfare: Africa. Revue Scientifique et Technique-Office International Des Epizooties 24: 579–586. https://doi.org/10.20506/rst.24.2.1593CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mason, G and Mendl, M 1993 Why is there no simple way of measuring animal welfare. Animal Welfare 2: 301–319Google Scholar
Mellor, DJ 2016 Updating animal welfare thinking: Moving beyond the “five freedoms” towards “a life worth living”. Animals 6: 21. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani6030021CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mendl, M, Burman, OH, Parker, RM and Paul, ES 2009 Cognitive bias as an indicator of animal emotion and welfare: emerging evidence and underlying mechanisms. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 118: 161–181. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applan-im.2009.02.023CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meneghini, R and Packer, AL 2007 Is there science beyond English? Initiatives to increase the quality and visibility of non-English publications might help to break down language barriers in scientific communication. EMBO Reports 8: 112–116. https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.embor.7400906CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moinard, C, Mendl, M, Nicol, CJ and Green, LE 2003 A case control study of on-farm risk factors for tail biting in pigs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 81: 333–355. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0168-1591(02)00276-9CrossRefGoogle Scholar
North, BP, Turnbull, JF, Ellis, T, Porter, MJ, Migaud, H, Bron, J and Bromage, NR 2006 The impact of stocking density on the welfare of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss). Aquaculture 255:466–479. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aquaculture.2006.01.004CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Callaghan, KA, Cripps, PJ, Downham, DY and Murray, RD 2003 Subjective and objective assessment of pain and discom-fort due to lameness in dairy cattle. Animal Welfare 12: 605–610Google Scholar
Pautasso, M 2012 Publication growth in biological sub-fields: pat-terns, predictability and sustainability. Sustainability 4: 3234–3247. https://doi.org/10.3390/su4123234CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearce, GP and Paterson, AM 1993 The effect of space restriction and provision of toys during rearing on the behaviour, pro-ductivity and physiology of male pigs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 36: 11–28. https://doi.org/10.1016/0168-1591(93)90095-7CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Provenza, FD 1995 Postingestive feedback as an elementary determinant of food preference and intake in ruminants. Rangeland Ecology & Management/Journal of Range Management Archives 48: 2–17. https://doi.org/10.2307/4002498CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rahman, SA, Walker, L and Ricketts, W 2005 Global per-spectives on animal welfare: Asia, the Far East and Oceania. Revue Scientifique et Technique-Office International des Epizooties 24: 597–610. https://doi.org/10.20506/rst.24.2.1591CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rauw, WM, Kanis, E, Noordhuizen-Stassen, EN and Grommers, FJ 1998 Undesirable side effects of selection for high production efficiency in farm animals: a review. Livestock Production Science 56: 15–33. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0301-6226(98)00147-XCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodriguez-Ledesma, A, Cobo, MJ, Lopez-Pujalte, C and Herrera-Viedma, E 2015 An overview of animal science research 1945–2011 through science mapping analysis. Journal of Animal Breeding and Genetics 132: 475–497. https://doi.org/10.1111/jbg.12124CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Seglen, PO 1997 Why the impact factor of journals should not be used for evaluating research. British Medical Journal 314: 498. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.314.7079.497CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sneddon, C, Harris, L, Dimitrov, R and Özesmi, U 2002 Contested waters: Conflict, scale, and sustainability in aquatic socioecological systems. Society & Natural Resources 15: 663–675. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920290069272CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sneddon, LU, Braithwaite, VA and Gentle, MJ 2003 Do fish-es have nociceptors? Evidence for the evolution of a vertebrate sensory system. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 270: 1115–1121. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2003.2349CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turnbull, J, Bell, A, Adams, C, Bron, J and Huntingford, F 2005 Stocking density and welfare of cage farmed Atlantic salmon: application of a multivariate analysis. Aquaculture 243: 121–132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aquaculture.2004.09.022CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van de Weerd, HA, Docking, CM, Day, JE, Avery, PJ and Edwards, SA 2003 A systematic approach towards developing environmental enrichment for pigs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 84: 101–118. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0168-1591(03)00150-3CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van der Schot, AA and Phillips, C 2013 Publication bias in ani-mal welfare scientific literature. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 26: 945–958. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-012-9433-8CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Eck, NJ and Waltman, L 2009 Software survey: VOS view-er, a computer program for bibliometric mapping. Scientometrics 84: 523–538. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-009-0146-3CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Eck, NJ and Waltman, L 2014 Visualising bibliometric net-works. In: Ding, Y, Rousseau, R and Wolfram, D (eds) Measuring Scholarly Impact: Methods and Practice pp 285–320. Springer International Publishing: New Yourk, USA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10377-8_13CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Eck, NJ, Waltman, L, Dekker, R and van den Berg, J 2010 A comparison of two techniques for bibliometric mapping: Multidimensional scaling and VOS. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 61: 2405–2416. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21421CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Leeuwen, TN, Moed, HF, Tijssen, RJ, Visser, MS and Van Raan, AF 2001 Language biases in the coverage of the Science Citation Index and its consequences for international comparisons of national research performance. Scientometrics 51:335–346. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010549719484CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Veissier, I and Miele, M 2014 Animal welfare: towards transdis-ciplinarity – the European experience. Animal Production Science 54: 1119–1129. https://doi.org/10.1071/AN14330CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, M, Diez-Leon, M and Mason, G 2014 Animal welfare science: Recent publication trends and future research priorities. International Journal of Comparative Psychology 27: 80–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waltman, L and van Eck, NJ 2013 A smart local moving algo-rithm for large-scale modularity-based community detection. European Physical Journal B86: 471. https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2013-40829-0CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waltman, L, van Eck, NJ and Noyons, ECM 2010 A unified approach to mapping and clustering of bibliometric networks. Journal of Informetrics 4: 629–635. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2010.07.002CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weeks, CA, Danbury, TD, Davies, HC, Hunt, P and Kestin, SC 2000 The behaviour of broiler chickens and its modification by lameness. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 67: 111–125. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0168-1591(99)00102-1CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Whay, HR, Main, DCJ, Green, LE and Webster, AJF 2003 Assessment of the welfare of dairy cattle using animal-based measurements: direct observations and investigation of farm records. Veterinary Record 153(7): 197–202. https://doi.org/10.1136/vr.153.7.197CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed