<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>Marine and coastal biodiversity is crucial to the planet’s functioning and offers ecosystem services that guarantee the health, wealth, and well-being of the entire humanity. This is why, evaluating the current body of research on coral reefs is essential for understanding the unprecedented growth of this field, which covers many topics including climate change, biotic interactions, bioresources, future bioprospecting, and biodiversity in general. Such an evaluation requires both descriptive summaries and co-citation analyses to understand the expansive nature of this particular research and identify research gaps. Given the importance of the topic and the fact that it is insufficiently addressed, this study fills in a gap regarding coral reefs studies. We analyzed coral reef research published in the Web of Science Core Collection database between 1970 and 2021, using the CiteSpace software. This gave a total of 20,362 records, focusing on variables including the list of contributors (author, affiliation, and country), total publications over time, dual map overlay, co-citation analysis (co-cited author and documents), cluster networks, and popular keywords and their burstness. We found that coral reef publications increased over time, with coastal countries (the USA, Australia, and Japan) being among the highest contributors. Researchers from Australia, New Zealand, and the USA are the top producers of coral reef research worldwide. Unsurprisingly, the journal Coral Reefs was the most productive journal. Interestingly, we found that keywords such as “great barrier reef,” “climate change,” and “predation” were among the top cited and most influential in coral reef science. To our knowledge, this is the first study to identify trends in coral reef research using scientometric analyses based on the CiteSpace software.</p>
</abstract>

Marine and coastal biodiversity is crucial to the planet’s functioning and offers ecosystem services that guarantee the health, wealth, and well-being of the entire humanity. This is why, evaluating the current body of research on coral reefs is essential for understanding the unprecedented growth of this field, which covers many topics including climate change, biotic interactions, bioresources, future bioprospecting, and biodiversity in general. Such an evaluation requires both descriptive summaries and co-citation analyses to understand the expansive nature of this particular research and identify research gaps. Given the importance of the topic and the fact that it is insufficiently addressed, this study fills in a gap regarding coral reefs studies. We analyzed coral reef research published in the Web of Science Core Collection database between 1970 and 2021, using the CiteSpace software. This gave a total of 20,362 records, focusing on variables including the list of contributors (author, affiliation, and country), total publications over time, dual map overlay, co-citation analysis (co-cited author and documents), cluster networks, and popular keywords and their burstness. We found that coral reef publications increased over time, with coastal countries (the USA, Australia, and Japan) being among the highest contributors. Researchers from Australia, New Zealand, and the USA are the top producers of coral reef research worldwide. Unsurprisingly, the journal Coral Reefs was the most productive journal. Interestingly, we found that keywords such as “great barrier reef,” “climate change,” and “predation” were among the top cited and most influential in coral reef science. To our knowledge, this is the first study to identify trends in coral reef research using scientometric analyses based on the CiteSpace software.

A Scientometric Macroanalysis of Coral Reef Research in the World

Laboratoire de Recherche et d’Étude en Aménagement et Urbanisme (LREAU)

Université des Sciences et de la Technologie (USTHB)

Laboratory of Archaeological Heritage and Its Enhancement

Department of Architecture, Faculty of Technology

Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainable Development

Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism

Ekológia (Bratislava)

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

{"article-title":"A Scientometric Macroanalysis of Coral Reef Research in the World"}

Marine and coastal biodiversity is crucial to the planet’s functioning and offers ecosystem services that guarantee the health, wealth, and well-being of the...

A Scientometric Macroanalysis of Coral Reef Research in the World

Publié en ligne: 30 juin 2023

Pages: 108 - 116

Reçu: 18 nov. 2022

Accepté: 14 mars 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/eko-2023-0013

Mots clés
aquatic environment, coral bleach, coastal ecosystem, fish community, tropical reef

© 2023 Mohamad Nor Azra et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

A Scientometric Macroanalysis of Coral Reef Research in the World

Publié en ligne: 30 juin 2023

Pages: 108 - 116

Reçu: 18 nov. 2022

Accepté: 14 mars 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/eko-2023-0013

Mots clésaquatic environment, coral bleach, coastal ecosystem, fish community, tropical reef

© 2023 Mohamad Nor Azra et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Mots clés
aquatic environment, coral bleach, coastal ecosystem, fish community, tropical reef