GAPs in the study of zoo and wild animal welfare

Goulart, V D and Azevedo, P G and van de Schepop, J A and Teixeira, C P and Barcante, L and Azevedo, C S and Young, R J

Zoo Biology (2009) 28: 561–573

DOI: 10.1002/zoo.20285

Abstract

To investigate the science of animal welfare for zoo and wild animals in the period from 1966 to 2007, we conducted a bibliometric analysis of abstracts downloaded from The Web of Science((c)) database using the keyword combination "Animal welfare, Zoo* and wild" in the topic field. In total we downloaded 1,125 abstracts, which were classified into the following categories: year of publication; environment of the study (e.g., zoo) or theoretical; area of knowledge (e.g., conservation in situ); number of experimental animals used; species; addresses of authors; taxonomic classification; publication language; journal name; number of citations received. Since 1990, there has been a rapid increase in the number of articles published in this area of animal welfare. One worrying result was that published articles were predominately of a theoretical nature (58.65%, N=563). Most of the articles were published by authors either in Europe (47.43%, N=480) or North America (37.65%, N=381) and written in English (87.71%, N=971). The majority of experimental studies were conducted with mammals (75.92%, N=391), and had small sample sizes (N=7 for zoo-based studies). In terms of impact factor (IF), the journals in this study had a median factor equivalent to that for the area of biological sciences (median IF=1.013). Little knowledge cross-over from farm animal welfare was found (only four articles) in this study. In conclusion, zoo and wild animal welfare as a science may benefit from a greater interaction with farm animal welfare.

Citation

Goulart, V. D., Azevedo, P. G., van de Schepop, J. A., Teixeira, C. P., Barcante, L., Azevedo, C. S., & Young, R. J. (2009). GAPs in the study of zoo and wild animal welfare. Zoo Biology, 28(6), 561–573. https://doi.org/10.1002/zoo.20285 Animals, Bibliographic, Databases, Wild, Zoo, 20th Century, 21st Century, Animal Welfare/history/standards/trends, Bibliometrics, History, Journal Impact Factor

Keywords

• Animals
• Bibliographic
• Databases
• Wild
• Zoo
• 20th Century
• 21st Century
• Animal Welfare/history/standards/trends
• Bibliometrics
• History
• Journal Impact Factor