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Agrifood research in Europe: a global perspective

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Abstract

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 3–4% 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.

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Notes

  1. From the EU: the Czech Republic, Estonia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia and Spain, from other regions: Croatia, Iceland, Russia, and South Korea. Agrifood research here is defined by the NABS 2007 classification (Nomenclature for the Analysis and Comparison of Scientific Programmes and Budgets).

  2. Olivier Chartier (AgriMapping project coordinator), Walter Müller, Fons Werrij, Søren A. Mikkelsen, Lise Andreasen, François Houllier and Max Feinberg are mentioned as advocates of the above classification system.

  3. The option to use other databases—such as CAB Abstracts, FAO Agris and Scopus—was also carefully considered, see later.

  4. Beyond the EU-27 countries, Croatia, Iceland, Israel, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey were also included as countries fully eligible for participation in ERA projects in the period, when the study was compiled.

  5. See for example the Third European Report on S&T Indicators, European Commission, Brussels, 2003.

  6. Certainly and interestingly, the statement is true for the developed world, whose publications dominate the Web of Science database, which was used for the present study.

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Acknowledgements

This paper draws on the work done in the EU AgriMapping project, implemented in 2007–2008 and funded by the European Commission through the contract FP6-506087 under the 6th Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. GKI Economic Research Co., Budapest, Hungary

    Balázs Borsi

  2. Eszterházy Károly College, Eger, Hungary

    Balázs Borsi

  3. Institute for Research Policy Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary

    András Schubert

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  1. Balázs Borsi
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  2. András Schubert
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Correspondence to András Schubert.

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Supplementary material 1 (DOC 323 kb)

Appendix: Example of a search profile

Appendix: Example of a search profile

Level1: H. Aquaculture and fisheries

Code: H2

Level2: Fisheries

Pre-filter: NO

Search Profile: TS = ((fishery OR fisheries OR fish-captur* OR fishing) SAME (manage* OR conservation OR ecolog* OR ecosys* OR system* OR quota* OR sustainab*) OR fish-farming OR marine-ecolog* OR marineecosys* OR marine-conservat*)

Post-filter:

  • BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION

  • ECOLOGY

  • FISHERIES

  • MARINE & FRESHWATER BIOLOGY

  • MULTIDISCIPLINARY SCIENCES

Hits: 3991

Each of the search profiles are available as an online supplement (Tables 3, 4, 5).

Table 3 Number of publications by countries and fields of agrifood science 1996–2005
Full size table
Table 4 Citations per publications by countries and fields of agrifood science 1996–2005
Full size table
Table 5 Publications (P) and citations per publications (C/P) by the top 30 EU-33 institutions and fields of science 1996–2005
Full size table

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Borsi, B., Schubert, A. Agrifood research in Europe: a global perspective. Scientometrics 86, 133–154 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-010-0235-3

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