Paradigm shifts in forestry and forest research: a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Forestry literature often suggests that the scope of forestry and forest research has changed, though there is limited empirical evidence to support this hypothesis. We used a bibliometric approach to quantify changes in word frequency in titles of documents in the Web of Science category “forestry”. Single words and word pairs (bigrams) were extracted from a total of 150 679 documents across 651 sources that spanned the period of 1956–2019. We identified increasing and decreasing trends in word frequency, identified influential documents, and examined country of origin. The number of documents published in forestry research has increased annually, with the United States, Canada, and China producing the highest quantities. The most influential documents in the data set involved methodology, stand development, and climate change. Word frequencies revealed a shift in research away from sustained-yield-based forestry and towards a more interdisciplinary view of forests as ecologically important, dynamic systems. We argue that changes in research trends reflect a broader paradigm shift towards sustainable forest management.