Mapping the Scientific Literature on Sheep and Goat Research: Country-Level Bibliometric Analysis

The present study investigates whether the major countries contributing to sheep and goat research internationally differ in patterns of scientific output, collaborations and thematic orientation, how international research partnerships and thematic profiles have changed over time, and which country-level characteristics may be associated with citation impact. The specific objectives of the present study were the characterization of the geographical organization of sheep and goat research and the identification of country-level patterns and associations underlying its international scientific output. The Web of Science was used, and 165,052 papers related to sheep and 67,637 papers related to goats, published until 2024, were obtained. Then, papers originating from countries with at least 1% of total published papers from each species were considered. Small Ruminant Research was the journal with the most published papers; ‘Veterinary Sciences’ was the dominant Web of Science journal category. ‘Ruminant nutrition’ and ‘Livestock reproduction’ were the most widely represented topics in published papers from most countries, although between-country differences and changes in topic specialization over time were also seen. Two variables were positively associated with the average number of citations per paper: average number of references cited per paper and number of countries with which collaborative papers were published, both for sheep- and goat-related papers. Specifically for goat-related papers, thematic concentration was also associated with the average number of citations per paper. Overall, the study has highlighted the dynamic spatial structure of scientific output from sheep and goat research and its evolution over time.