Abstract
Simple SummaryTransactional agreements between applied research and regulatory agencies in animal welfare are scarce for minority species. In the present study, camel science upturn and its academic and societal impacts are bibliometrically traced across academic journals involving camel referring documents. The journal, author number, corresponding author origin, discipline and publication year may affect camel research outcomes. Despite camel-related research and its mean impact factor having noticeably increased over the past three decades due to growing social and economic interests in their breeding, parallel evolution of specific welfare laws is limited. Reliable guidance and mandatory standard policies for assessing reared-camel welfare research are identified as primary requirements within this emerging industry on a global scale. Research must play a pivotal role in the formulation of regulations, as the disconnection between science and law renders the efforts to ensure sustainable camel husbandry practices under the scope of welfare impractical.The lack of applied scientific research on camels, despite them being recognized as production animals, compels the reorganization of emerging camel breeding systems with the aim of achieving successful camel welfare management strategies all over the world. Relevant and properly-framed research widely impacts dissemination of scientific contents and drives public willingness to enhance ethically acceptable conditions for domestic animals. Consumer perception of this livestock industry will improve and high-quality products will be obtained. This paper draws on bibliometric indicators as promoting factors for camel-related research advances, tracing historical scientific publications indexed in ScienceDirect directory from 1880–2019. Camel as a species did not affect Journal Citation Reports (JCR) impact (p > 0.05) despite the journal, author number, corresponding author origin, discipline and publication year affecting it (p < 0.001). Countries with traditionally well-established camel farming are also responsible for the papers with the highest academic impact. However, camel research advances may have only locally and partially influenced welfare related laws, so intentional harming acts and basic needs neglect may persist in these species. A sustainable camel industry requires those involved in camel research to influence business stakeholders and animal welfare advocacies by highlighting the benefits of camel wellbeing promotion, co-innovation partnership establishment and urgent enhancement of policy reform.
Highlights
Old World camels (Camelus dromedarius or one-humped camel, Camelus bactrianus or two-humped camel and the wild species Camelus ferus) are mainly found in the desert and semi-desert areas of the Middle East through northern India and arid regions in Africa [1]
The present paper primarily aimed to evaluate the evolution of research advances and their scientific impact in regards to the camel species, considering potential conditioning factors such as the journal, number of authors per contribution, country of corresponding author, topic with which the different publications dealt, year of publication and camel species studied
Data were filtered to discard those documents which did not focus on the Camelus genus or its species (Camelus dromedarius, Camelus bactrianus, Camelus ferus and other extinct species) by searching for the words ‘camel/s’, ‘camelid/s’, ‘Camelus’, ‘dromedary/ies’, ‘Bactrian’ and ‘feral’ in each article
Summary
Old World camels (Camelus dromedarius or one-humped camel, Camelus bactrianus or two-humped camel and the wild species Camelus ferus) are mainly found in the desert and semi-desert areas of the Middle East through northern India and arid regions in Africa [1]. Some feral populations of dromedary camels inhabit in some arid regions of central Australia, India and Kazakhstan [2], and could be found in the southwestern United States until the early 20th century [3]. The critically endangered wild Bactrian (C. ferus) only survives in remote areas of northwest China and Mongolia [4]. Domestic camels played an important role in Old World ancient nomadic civilizations’ prosperity. A few low-income nomadic livelihoods in Africa and Eastern
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