Leader prolific authors in Spanish tourism research

Abstract Tourism and hospitality is a very important industry in the world. Specially, it is one of the most important sectors in Spain. Therefore, Spanish tourism research must play a relevant role. This paper focuses on the analysis of the international scientific output of the Spanish researchers on tourism and hospitality. The bibliometric analysis was performed using the database Scopus from 2002 to 2013. Hence, the article’s first objective was the identification of the main Spanish researchers in tourism and hospitality. The second objective was to identify the leader and most prolific authors in tourism and hospitality research in Spain. This second objective sought to provide a procedure for selecting leader authors, therefore enabling a distinction among different authors who publish their research in tourism and hospitality. A ranking of 79 prolific leader authors in tourism and hospitality research was obtained using a methodology based especially on authorship order.