Network analysis of dairy science research: Mapping the global intellectual structure

This paper aimed to map the dairy science field by examining publishing trends, networking trends, thematic distributions and impact articles that were recorded in the Scopus database. This will determine the most influential leading authors, institutions, countries and research clusters, which will help to reveal the history and the contemporary scopes of dairy science. A bibliometric and network analysis was performed on 3685 articles located in Scopus using a direct phrase search of the term Dairy Science stored in title, abstract and keywords. VOSviewer (Van Eck & Waltman, 2010) was employed to visualise over the 2010-2025 period the coauthorship networks, keywords co-occurrences, co-citation and citation patterns and bibliographical coupling of authors, institutions, countries and sources. Findings: The US became a leader in the world of dairy science in terms of research output and cooperation. The best-performing institutions in terms of production and strength of connection were the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Wageningen University. Journal of Dairy Science was the most prolific and most cited source. Key word mapping revealed four thematic clusters: dairy cow production, animal genetics, animal health and dairy product quality. Both co-citation and citation analysis showed reference to seminal articles, including Jenkins (1992) regarding lipid metabolism in the rumen and Palmquist (2017) regarding fat feeding. The findings can be helpful for researchers, industry stakeholders and policy-makers to help them find potential partners, identify emerging themes and access critical citation resources that will shape dairy research in the future.