The scholar’s best friend: research trends in dog cognitive and behavioral studies

Abstract

In recent decades, cognitive and behavioral knowledge in dogs seems to have developed considerably, as deduced from the published peer-reviewed articles. However, to date, the worldwide trend of scientific research on dog cognition and behavior has never been explored using a bibliometric approach, while the evaluation of scientific research has increasingly become important in recent years. In this review, we compared the publication trend of the articles in the last 34 years on dogs’ cognitive and behavioral science with those in the general category “Behavioral Science”. We found that, after 2005, there has been a sharp increase in scientific publications on dogs. Therefore, the year 2005 has been used as “starting point” to perform an in-depth bibliometric analysis of the scientific activity in dog cognitive and behavioral studies. The period between 2006 and 2018 is taken as the study period, and a backward analysis was also carried out. The data analysis was performed using “bibliometrix”, a new R-tool used for comprehensive science mapping analysis. We analyzed all information related to sources, countries, affiliations, co-occurrence network, thematic maps, collaboration network, and world map. The results scientifically support the common perception that dogs are attracting the interest of scholars much more now than before and more than the general trend in cognitive and behavioral studies. Both, the changes in research themes and new research themes, contributed to the increase in the scientific production on the cognitive and behavioral aspects of dogs. Our investigation may benefit the researchers interested in the field of cognitive and behavioral science in dogs, thus favoring future research work and promoting interdisciplinary collaborations.

Comprehensive Bibliometric Analysis of the Kynurenine Pathway in Mood Disorders: Focus on Gut Microbiota Research

“…The thematic map was created by using a two-dimensional matrix involving two types of measurement: centrality and density. Figure 11A shows the thematic map of “Keywords Plus,” in which the X -axis indicates the centrality, i.e., the importance of a theme, and the Y -axis represents the density, a measure of the development of a theme ( Aria et al, 2020 ). Accordingly, the upper right quadrant (i.e., quadrant 1) pertains to motor themes that are both important and well-developed, the upper left quadrant (i.e., quadrant 2) is associated with highly developed and isolated themes, the lower left quadrant (i.e., quadrant 3) refers to emerging or declining themes, and the lower right quadrant (i.e., quadrant 4) contains transversal and basic themes ( Cobo et al, 2011 ).…”

“…To obtain more convincing and reliable results, we performed an integrated analysis of thematic maps via the biblioshiny app and burst analysis of keywords via Citespace, on the basis of the WoSCC database, to examine the research frontiers in the field of the KP in mood disorders. A thematic map resulting from a clustering analysis of a co-occurrence network provides a Cartesian representation of the identified term clusters ( Aria et al, 2020 ). It allows for easy visual interpretation of the research themes developed in a framework and provides information regarding emerging or declining themes ( Aria and Cuccurullo, 2017 ).…”

Research Trends in Octopus Biological Studies

“…The workflow was similar to our recent paper on dog cognition and behavior [ 22 ]. All publications of interest were identified by using the following query requiring to search the word “octopus” in the author keywords (AK), in the abstract (AB), and in the title (TI): ((AK = octopus) OR (AB = octopus) OR (TI = octopus)).…”

What Do We Know about Co-Working Spaces? Trends and Challenges Ahead

“…As pointed above, bibliometric studies are valuable, yet, while documenting what is out there is interesting, the analysis needs to dive into the substance of the works in order to advance the understanding of the phenomenon under investigation. Therefore, when designing this study special attention was put on the works published by the developers of Bibliometrix [24,25] as well as on other relevant works that employ this software package and go beyond descriptive findings to create interpretations (e.g., [26][27][28]).…”