Bibliometric Analysis of Scientific Studies on Horse Welfare from Past to Present

Abstract

Animal welfare studies continue to gain importance over the years. Since horses are bred and cared for many different purposes, welfare studies on horses have a wide scope. Detailed information about the research topic can be obtained by determining many changes such as the fields, researchers and countries in the published studies over the years through bibliometric analysis. For the bibliometric analysis of horse welfare studies, the Web of Science database was scanned and a total of 1983 documents were found between 1983 and 2023. The most studies in this field were found in Animals, Applied Animal Welfare Science and Equine Veterinary Journal. Mc Greevy P.D. was determined as the author with the most articles in this field. The highest number of corresponding authors of articles in horse welfare were from the United Kingdom. By the bibliometric analysis, the change in years of the trend research fields of horse welfare, based on keywords made the changes particularly easy to understand. The results of the present study could easily be used in planning further studies in horse welfare, which could save time and costs.