New Scientometric-Based Knowledge Map of Food Science Research (2003 to 2014)

This article describes an analysis of keywords which was aimed at revealing publication patterns in the field of Food Science (FS) during the last decade, including the temporal evolution of its different research lines. To this end, the records of the specific subject area of FS were 1st retrieved from Scopus, and then their keywords were processed to resolve the obvious problems of synonymy and to limit the study to those most frequently used. These keywords were grouped into thematic clusters based on a scientometric technique known as co-word analysis. The structure of the clusters, their scientific impact, and their temporal evolution were then analyzed. This type of analysis is of great interest for all researchers in FS-for new researchers because they can form an objective vision of the subject based on the data from papers that have been published in the last decade, and for experienced researchers because they can contrast their own vision of the field with this objective overview. The results showed there to has been a clear increase in scientific production related to FS. This production had a structure corresponding to 5 major clusters which were themselves disaggregated into 18 2nd-level clusters. The cluster that had received most attention was that corresponding to antioxidants in food, being the cluster with the greatest scientific impact and the greatest growth in the period.