The objectives were: (i) mapping of bibliometric characteristics of publications related to sheep and goats internationally, (ii) comparison of publications related to each animal species, and (iii) comparison of characteristics in a 55-year long timespan from 1970 to 2024. The Web of Science was used with the following search terms: sheep OR ovine OR Ovis aries or goat* OR caprine OR Capra hircus.account, and 165,052 papers related to sheep and 67,637 papers related to goats were considered. There was a progressive increase in papers published annually, with a higher proportion of papers related to goats published recently. Most papers were published in Small Ruminant Research (2.2% and 4.4% of papers related to sheep and goats, respectively), the journal with most published papers for 21 (sheep) and 29 (goats) years. Most papers originated from the United States of America, the country with most published papers for 52 (sheep) and 41 (goats) years. Most published papers related to sheep or goats were classified in the Dairy and animal sciences topics-meso. The two predominant topics-micro were Ruminant nutrition and Livestock reproduction for published papers related to sheep and papers related to goats. Overall, 31.7% and 34.9% of papers related to sheep and goats, respectively, were published under open access, with a progressive increase yearly. On average, papers related to sheep had received 0.93 citations annually and papers related to goats 0.73 citations annually.
Vaitsi et al. (Fri,) studied this question.