World camel research: a scientometric assessment, 2003-2012

An analysis of 3,089 papers on global camel research during 2003-2012, as indexed in Scopus international multidisciplinary database indicate an average annual growth rate of 11.20% and registered an average citation per paper of 2.24. The publication output was scattered in 257 journal titles and originated in 104 countries, of which the top 15 countries contributed 87.44% share to global publication output during 2003-2012. The highest publication output came from USA, followed by India, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, United Arab Republic, United Kingdom, France, China, Germany, Sudan, Belgium, Australia, Canada and Kenya. The publication share has increased in case of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China, France, Sudan, India, Australia and Canada, as against decrease in UK, USA, Kenya, Belgium, Germany and UAE from 2003-2007 to 2008-2012. Eight out of 15 most productive countries have achieved high relative citation index (1 and above): Belgium (3.61), Australia (2.69), UK (2.38), Canada (2.33), France (2.07), USA (1.87), Germany (1.65), UAE (1.11) and Kenya (1.09) during 2003-2012. Agricultural and biological sciences (43.35% share) contributed the largest share, followed by veterinary science (29.75% share), medicine (17.74% share), immunology and microbiology (13.99% share), biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology (13.99% share), environment science (5.08% share) and pharmacology, toxicology and pharmaceutics (3.11% share) during 2003-2012. Among narrow sub-fields, the focused areas were camel disease and infection, camel milk and dairy produce, camel non-milk products, camel reproduction, camel feed and diet camel physiology, camel genetics, camel parasitology, etc. The world camel research output originated from 311 organizations, of which the top 20 contributed 31.72% global publication share during 2003-2012.