Systematization of 100 years of studies on native horses (Equus ferus caballus): contributions from research, authors and countries

The objective of this scientometric study was to evaluate the global trends and characteristics of research published with native horses from 1920 to July 24, 2024. In total, after screening, 274 articles were considered for scientometric analyses. The data was collected in Scopus and analyzed in the RStudio software, “Bibliometrix” was used to calculate the basic bibliometric characteristics, present the collaboration conditions of countries and authors, and generate a three-field graph to show the relationships between authors, affiliations, and most cited articles based on total global and local citations and keywords. The VOSviewer was used for country and institution co-authorship analysis, bibliometric coupling, and keyword co-occurrence analysis. During this time period, the annual growth rate of articles was 2.02%, with an average of 9.57 citations. The articles have an average age of 10.80 years and contain 7795 references. A total of 839 additional keywords. The documents were written by 1333 authors, with an average of 6.07 co-authors per document and 26.28% international co-authorship. The scientific community has shown a great interest in understanding the origin, genetic variability and conservation needs of native horses, using advanced molecular tools and promoting international collaboration.