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 examine 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 analyse 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 is 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 other such as mangroves and shrimp farming, benthic sediments are gradually loosing in weight. While bibliometric methods do not necessarily provide a measure of output or impact of research activities, they are useful tools for mapping a research area, identifying the relevance of themes in the scientific literature and understanding how research fronts evolve and interact. This information may be valuable for research institutions and policy makers for targeting research efforts, establishing collaborations and positioning in the research area.JRC.G.4-Maritime affair