Classic publications in food security research: A bibliometric analysis

• Published date: 01 May 2024
• Author: Yuh‐Shan Ho,Francis Lwesya
• Date: 01 May 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/wfp2.12066

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Classic publications in food security research:

A bibliometric analysis

Yuh-Shan Ho

1

| Francis Lwesya

2

1

Trend Research Centre, Asia University,

Taichung, Taiwan

2

Department of Business Administration

and Management, The University of

Dodoma, Dodoma, Tanzania

Correspondence

Francis Lwesya, Department of Business

Administration and Management, The

University of Dodoma, Dodoma, Tanzania.

Email: flwesya@yahoo.com

Abstract

The article presents classic publications in the field of

food security from 1993 to 2022 using bibliometric

methods. Data come from the Science Citation Index

Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED) of the Web of Science

database. The results show that the years 2010 and

2011 stand out as the most prolific, with a total of three

classic articles receiving the highest citations. The arti-

cles show that agricultural intensification does not nec-

essarily lead to increased yields but rather contributes

to environmental degradation through deforestation,

biodiversity loss, and ultimately climate change. The

articles highlight the adoption of ecologically friendly

methods, natural solution, and technology-based and

sustainable agricultural practices to reduce the impact

of climate change and address food insecurity. How-

ever, linking agricultural intensification to biodiversity

conservation and hunger and the effectiveness of differ-

ent adaptation models in the increasing variability of

extreme events remain complex issues that require fur-

ther research in the future. Similarly, machine learning

research can be used to address food insecurity,

especially in crop or plant, and forestry tree breeding,

precision agriculture, and so forth.

KEYWORDS

classic articles, climate change, global food security, Web of Science

Core Collection

Received: 13 February 2024 Accepted: 15 March 2024

DOI: 10.1002/wfp2.12066

World Food Policy. 2024;10:143–161. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/wfp2 © 2024 Policy Studies Organization. 143

1|INTRODUCTION

Food security remains one of the most pressing global topics that has attracted the attention of

international organizations, policy-makers, and scientific research (Skaf et al., 2020). It is esti-

mated that nearly 1 billion people are undernourished because of chronic food insecurity and

that food demand is expected to increase by at least 50% by 2050 (Godfray et al., 2010; Nelleman

et al., 2009). The impacts of climate change are having significant negative impacts on food pro-

duction and food security worldwide because of rising global temperatures, changing weather

patterns, and other environmental disruptions. Consequently, the focus has been on trans-

forming food systems, taking into account greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), freshwater

resources, biodiversity, and soil quality to achieve sustainability (Bock et al., 2022; Von Braun

et al., 2021). In this article, we review classic publications with more than 1000 citations in the

field of food security, which suggests that they are impactful articles that contribute to

the research field. Previously, Garfield (1976) pointed out that classic articles are articles that

have been cited 100 or more times; recently, articles with at least 1000 citations from the Web

of Science Core Collection are also referred to as classic articles (Ho, 2018; Long et al., 2014;

Yeung & Ho, 2018). We report the characteristics of classic articles, publication outputs,

journals, life citation histories, and other attributes of the classic articles based on the Web of

Science categories in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED).

2|DATA SOURCES AND METHODS

Data for this study were collected on November 10, 2023, by extracting information from the

online databases of the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED). According to

the latest Journal Citation Reports (JCR) released by Clarivate on June 28, 2023, there is a total

of 9637 journals categorized under 178 Web of Science categories in SCI-EXPANDED.

In 2011, the “front page”including title, abstract, and author keywords as a filter was

proposed to improve search strategy when using the terms of Topic (TS) in the Web of Science

Core Collection for the bibliometric study (Wang & Ho, 2011). The “front page”filter can avoid

introducing unrelated publications for bibliometric analysis. In recent years, a significant differ-

ence was found in a wide range of bibliometric studies using the “front page”as a filter, for

example, research topics: Fenton oxidation for soil and water remediation (Usman & Ho, 2020),

insomnia (Jallow et al., 2020), Q fever (Farooq et al., 2022), and temporomandibular disorders

(Al-Moraissi et al., 2023).

To ensure thorough search coverage, we employed the use of quotation marks (“”) and the

Boolean operator “or”to guarantee the inclusion of at least one search keyword in the TOPIC

field (title, abstract, author keywords, and Keywords Plus) from 1991 to 2022.

The search keywords used were “food security.”To have more accurate analysis results,

uncommon terms, namely, “grain security,”“security of food,”“food securities,”“security of

grain,”“security of foods,”“foodstuff security,”“security of foodstuffs,”“foods security,”

“securitization of food,”“food securitization,”and “foodborne security,”and some terms missed

spaces in the database, namely, “food securityand,”in SCI-EXPANDED were also considered.

The asterisk (*) represents any group of characters, including no character. Furthermore “food

security*”was used to check out articles containing “food security (“or “food security).”

In 2014, Ho’s research group introduced the term “classic articles,”defining it as any article

garnering a total of 1000 citations or more from the Web of Science Core Collection. The

144 HO and LWESYA