Research trends related to tropical timber species for the last four decades through scientometric analyses

Aim of study: Dialogue among stakeholders is key for implementing sustainable forest management in tropical forests. However, in such multi-actor processes, the role and interest of a key stakeholder such as scientists is often overlooked. Hence, the aim of this work was to analyse the topics that forest scientists have related the most to the concept of “tropical timber species” during the last four decades. Area of study: World´s tropical forests. Material and methods: Scientometric analyses (co-word analysis), using Bibliometrix and Biblioshiny R packages with Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus databases. Main results: A total of 35,204 documents were identified that used the “tropical timber species” concept. Scientific productivity grew from one occurrence in 1980 to 31,457 occurrences by 2023, with 40% of all relevant scientific productivity generated in the 2018-2023 period. Dominant research themes were related to basic science on ecological structure (topics such as taxonomy and biodiversity, with 4,682 and 4,359 occurrences, respectively). However, climate change is quickly growing in importance (575 occurrences in 2018-2023). In fact, climate change has become a basic research topic, while applied themes such as ecosystem fragmentation, deforestation, forest management and remote sensing have become the themes more prevalent (as niche, motor or basic themes) in the last two years studied (2022-2023). Research highlights: Scientists are increasingly showing interest in applied topics related to management of tropical timber species. However, forest scientists are also mostly interested in research related to biodiversity, conservation and climate change when studying tropical timber species. Hence, such issues should be taken into account in multi-actor dialogues on sustainable tropical forest management.