Data obtained from Web of Science: A bibliometric analysis of the literature on goat breeding

Background: Bibliometric analysis has an essential role in scientific studies nowadays. Some research areas still have many gaps. This is also the case in animal science. Therefore, the status of current studies can be analysed and provide guidance for future research through the scientific studies that will be conducted. The aim of the present study was to perform a bibliometric analysis on goat breeding to evaluate the current trends, gaps of knowledge and the future perspectives. Methods: The large dataset was extracted from Web of Science (WOS) that is known as popular database for scientific studies. According to the WoS, we used approximately 1000 scientific papers (1991 to 2023) which contains articles, book chapters, data papers, proceedings paper, meeting abstracts, and notes. All bibliometric analyses were performed using bibliometrix package in the R statistical software. Results and Conclusions: In 2023, there were 34 studies available. Average citations per years showed that the highest average citation count was represented by year of 2006 (31.35). Totally, 265 scientific journals in the WoS database published goat breeding studies. Small Ruminant Research leads to the rest of with 145 articles. In conclusion, the scientific studies in the goat breeding area seem to be popular in recent years. Authors may gravitate towards popular journals in the future.