Catfishes: A global review of the literature

Abstract

This study aims to elucidate the evolution of catfish research publications over recent decades, identify emerging research clusters, examine keyword patterns, determine major contributors (including authors, organizations, and funding agencies), and analyze their collaborative networks and citation bursts on a global scale. The USA, Brazil, China, and India collectively contribute approximately 67% of the total catfish research publications, with a marked increase in prevalence since 2016. The most frequently occurring and dominant keywords are “channel catfish” and “responses,” respectively. Intriguingly, our findings reveal 28 distinct article clusters, with prominent clusters including “yellow catfish,” “channel catfish”, “pectoral girdle,” “African catfish”, “Rio Sao Francisco basin,” “ Edwardsiella ictaluri,” and “temperature mediated”. Concurrently, keyword clustering generates seven main clusters: “new species”, “growth performance”, “heavy metal”, “gonadotropin-releasing”, “essential oil”, and “olfactory receptor”. This study further anticipates future research directions, offering fresh perspectives on the catfish literature landscape. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first article to conduct a comprehensive mapping review of catfish research publications worldwide.

Abstract

Catfishes live in marine and freshwater environments and contain both highly endangered and successful invasive species. Due to their worldwide diversity and distribution, they are considered interesting models for scientific research and publication, in various fields of study. In order to fully understand global academic trends and corresponding trajectories about catfish research, the mapping review is proposed based on the 20,139 articles from the metabase of Web of Science Core Collection from its inception until December 2022 and visualized by the scientometric software of CiteSpace.