A Bibliometric Analysis of Global Trends in Vegan-Related Research

Abstract

This study is the first bibliometric analysis of vegan-related research. This article aims to identify and organize fundamental and influential works across several decades in order to gain insight into global trends in vegan-related research. We searched the Scopus database and included all relevant articles published from 1960 (inception) to 2020. We limited our search to English language articles containing the terms “vegan,” “vegans,” or “veganism” in the title or abstract. We included all types of articles that were published in journals. We conducted a bibliometric analysis with the open-source R programming software-based Bibliometrix package. There were a total of 1440 relevant articles published in 664 journals over a span of 60 years. The first article was published in 1962. The average publication rate was 9.68 articles per year. The top journal was Nutrients with total publication of 85 (5.9%) articles and 924 total citations. The United States was the leading country with 471 articles and the University of Oxford was the most prolific institution with 59 articles. There was a total of 4586 authors with an average of 28 citations per article. McCarty from the United States was the leading author. The keyword “vegan” was the most used term with 411 occurrences, widely published in Nutrients by the United States authors. We conclude that the United States is the leading country in the field of vegan-related research and, if the trajectory we noted continues, the global trend in vegan-related research is likely to continue surging.