Biodiversity Research Trend in Romania - A Bibliometric Analysis

Ioana Claudia Todirică¹, Victor Petcu^1,2, Laurențiu Ciornei¹, Petruța Simona Simion¹, Ioana Corina Moga¹

 ¹Centrul de Studii și Cercetări de Biodiversitate Agrosilvică  "Acad. David Davidescu", București
²Institutul Național de Cercetare Dezvoltare Agricolă Fundulea  

Keywords: bibliometric analysis, biodiversity, Romania, research trends, Scopus database.

 Abstract: The last few decades have seen a significant increase in the study of biodiversity topic. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the trends and growth of publications in Romania's biodiversity research field using bibliometric techniques to assess the publications in this area. The foundation of this kind of study is the identification of the body of literature—that is, publications in a wide sense—in a certain topic. Therefore, the term “biodiversity” was searched in keywords, title and abstract in Scopus database. The results retrieved a total number of 1.228 papers, published in Scopus Database, mentioning Romania that were processed using VOS viewer 1.6.19 software. This emerged in 5 thematic clusters revolving around: ecology, forests, sustainability, marine ecosystems, and genetics. The first article mentioning Romania to be included in Scopus Database was released in 1997. Top three words in term of occurrences were “biodiversity”, “Romania”, and “environmental protection”. Most of the papers were part of agriculture, environment and earth and planetary sciences subject areas. The findings also revealed a rising tendency in biodiversity research from 1997 to 2023, moving away from ecological, Black Sea, Danube Delta, and Carpathian Mountains matters and toward more emerging ones such as sustainability, species richness, and conservation management.