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GAPs in the study of zoo and wild animal welfare
Author(s) -
Goulart Vinícius D.,
Azevedo Pedro G.,
van de Schepop Joanna A.,
Teixeira Camila P.,
Barçante Luciana,
Azevedo Cristiano S.,
Young Robert J.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
zoo biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.5
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1098-2361
pISSN - 0733-3188
DOI - 10.1002/zoo.20285
Subject(s) - animal welfare , welfare , web of science , biology , animal species , impact factor , veterinary medicine , zoology , ecology , medline , political science , medicine , biochemistry , law
To investigate the science of animal welfare for zoo and wild animals in the period from 1966 to 2007, we conducted a bibliometric analysis of abstracts downloaded from The Web of Science © database using the keyword combination “Animal welfare, Zoo* and wild” in the topic field. In total we downloaded 1,125 abstracts, which were classified into the following categories: year of publication; environment of the study (e.g., zoo) or theoretical; area of knowledge (e.g., conservation in situ); number of experimental animals used; species; addresses of authors; taxonomic classification; publication language; journal name; number of citations received. Since 1990, there has been a rapid increase in the number of articles published in this area of animal welfare. One worrying result was that published articles were predominately of a theoretical nature (58.65%, N =563). Most of the articles were published by authors either in Europe (47.43%, N =480) or North America (37.65%, N =381) and written in English (87.71%, N =971). The majority of experimental studies were conducted with mammals (75.92%, N =391), and had small sample sizes ( N =7 for zoo‐based studies). In terms of impact factor (IF), the journals in this study had a median factor equivalent to that for the area of biological sciences (median IF=1.013). Little knowledge cross‐over from farm animal welfare was found (only four articles) in this study. In conclusion, zoo and wild animal welfare as a science may benefit from a greater interaction with farm animal welfare. Zoo Biol 28:561–573, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.