Tools for analyzing and mapping scholarly publications not indexed by the Web of Science: the case of fruit and vegetable publications by the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA)

Introduction. The fruit and vegetable sector group of the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) carried out a bibliometric analysis of INRA publications on fruits and vegetables produced between 2002 and 2006. While a previous study focused on scientific publications indexed by the Web of Science, this study took into account the remaining INRA publications, i.e., gray literature, technical papers and scientific papers not indexed by the Web of Science. Materials and methods. Different steps were taken to constitute and process a corpus of INRA researchers' publication data. The citation corpus gathering bibliographic data was mainly constituted using the INRA institutional repository (ProdINRA). To ensure exhaustivity, a survey was carried out to collect INRA researchers' publications. Due to the different types of publications involved, we had to develop an original method to constitute a complete database which could allow bibliometric analysis. The Sphinx Plus(2) Survey program was used to analyze publications and Pajek software was used to visualize networks. Results. A total of 2,224 publications were authored by INRA between 2002 and 2006. We analyzed the typology of fruits and vegetables studied at INRA, the INRA research centers and research divisions involved, the main research topics, and the national and international partners of INRA authors. Graphic visualizations allowed an attractive presentation of relationships between authors within and outside INRA. Conclusion. This study led to the mapping of INRA fruit and vegetable research publications. It confirmed that INRA plays an active role in the field of fruit and vegetable research. French research is carried out in the main INRA research centers located in horticultural and/or fruit regions, particularly in South-Eastern France. Despite the fact that the nature of these publications provides less opportunity for co-publication, this study highlights the relationships between INRA and French partners or foreign countries.