BIBLIOMETRIC AND VISUALIZED ANALYSIS OF FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN RESEARCH IN 2004-2020

Nowadays, the importance of the food supply chain concept rises, as the world population increases, and the amount of natural resources decreases. The food supply chain helps to organize the process of food production, distribution, retailing, consumption, and disposal in a more sustainable way, with fewer losses and with larger benefits in compliance with the parameters of product quality and safety. Additionally, making modern food supply chains more sustainable will help to reduce the “domino” effect. However, there is a lack of bibliometric and visualization research in the food supply chain field. The results of the publications analyses in the food supply chain field are presented in the article. The research has been conducted by the application of the bibliometric method and visualization analysis to map the obtained results graphically. To reach the purpose of this study the 1 084 published papers were obtained from the Scopus Database. The conducted analysis helped to achieve some valuable insights. Firstly, the total number of publications in the “food supply chain” field is on the rise, with a peak in 2020. Secondly, the theme of the food supply chain becomes global, scientists from different institutions, countries, and continents begin working on it. Moreover, cooperation between countries and institutions is getting closer. Nevertheless, authors from the United Kingdom demonstrate the highest activity. Thirdly, the major current research critical spots in the “food supply chain” field, include sustainability, traceability, planning and optimization, social responsibility, and food waste. Also, the network of relationships between keywords within the research problem forms 7 clusters: food supply, sustainability, food waste, environmental impact, sustainable development, food processing, and inventory control. Furthermore, the research themes in the food supply chain have deepened during 2004-2020, they become more interdisciplinary and diversified. Thus, the findings of this paper and their graphical presentation are relevant and can help scientists to understand the latest achievements and gaps in the “food supply chain” field and offer useful guidance for further researches.

5. Choice of the language: English. 6. Choice of subject area: Social Sciences; Economics, Econometrics and Finance; Business, Management and Accounting; Decision Sciences. 7. Determination of research years: from 2004 till 2020 (by 2004 the number of publications per year was less than 10). 8. Manual check: the papers analysis in terms of their relevance. Thus, for further research 1 084 articles were chosen. The distribution of scientific papers over the years is in Figure 1. Though the first publications in the field of "food supply chain" are dated 70-ties, the growth of publication activity started in 2004. Since then, there has been a steady trend for increasing the number of publications and the trend line proves it. As shown in Figure 1, between 2004-2012, the volume of studies was less than 50 studies per year. From 2013 to 2020, the number of publications has exceeded 50 and reached 210 in 2020 (the peak). Also, more than 63% of studies were published within the last 5 years (from 2006 to 2020).
The authors with the largest number of published articles in the "food supply chain" research field are in Table 1. According to Table 1, all scientists have high h-index in Scopus Database, it proves that their publications are relevant to modern trends and attract attention of world scientific community. The top four contributors of the research area are the following scientist: Manning L., Bourlakis M., Mangla S.K. and Maye D. Country of affiliation of six authors out of ten is the United Kingdom; more two authors are from Italy; one is from Australia and one more is from Belgium. Also, we paid attention to the study of geographical coverage of the publication in "food supply chain" research field (Table 2). According to Table 2, most articles in "food supply chain" field are published by the scientists from Europe (UK, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, France and Spain); Asia (China, India), North America (USA) and Australia. Also, scientists from South America and Africa started to work over the problem of food supply chain too. This emphasizes the global relevance and importance of the "food supply chain" problem.
Additionally, using VOSviewer a network that illustrates the main publishing countries in "food supply chain" field was made. Top 10 journals in "food supply chain" field are listed in Table 3. As the Table reveals, the top 10 journals had published 399 papers in "food supply chain" field, accounting more than 1/3 (36,8%) of analyzed articles. These journals have high SNIP and almost all belong to Q1, except "Sustainability" and "International Journal of Supply Chain Management" (these two journals belong to Q2). The largest number of articles was published in "Journal of Cleaner Production" (85 articles), it is followed by "British Food Journal" (79 articles) and "Sustainability" (71 articles). In other journals were published 32 and less articles. Nevertheless, the most cited are articles from the following journals -"Journal of Cleaner Production" (2544 citations), "International Journal of Production Economics" (2520 citations) and "British Food Journal" (1415 citations).
On the other hand, the journal with the largest citations per 1 publication is "International Journal of Production Economics". The average number of citations for articles published in this journal is 78,8, followed by "Food Policy" (50, 9), and "Production Planning and Control" (49,7).
Also, this Table gives such indicator as cited interval. It shows the number of papers published in the journal with some citation quantity. In the cited interval ≥ 400, only two papers had been published: one in the "Journal of Cleaner Production" and one more in "Food Policy". In the cited interval ≥ 300, three articles were published in the "International Journal of Production Economics". Cited interval ≥ 200 includes two articles from "Journal of Cleaner Production", one from "International Journal of Production Research" and one more from "Production Planning And Control". According to the citation interval, only two papers were cited more than 400 times in the top 10 journals, 3 papers were cited more than 300 times, 4 papers were cited more than 200 times, 13 papers were cited more than 100 times, and most of the papers were cited in the interval from 10 to 50 times.
Additionally, 50% of top 10 journals have affiliation of the United Kingdom and more 30% of the Netherlands. The 10 most cited publications found in Scopus in "food supply chain" field are in Table 4. All 10 articles were cited more than 200 times. It means that research field is important and burning for world scientific community. Also, there is a scientific discussion that emphasizes the relevance of the research topic. Among the top 10 publications, multi-country cooperation accounted for 6 papers and multi-institution cooperation for 8 papers.
The top 10 most cited publications can be divided into the following research topics: sustainability (rank 5, 6 and 10), traceability (rank 8,9), planning and optimization (rank 2, 4, 7), social responsibility (rank 1), food waste (rank 3). In terms of the frequency of institutional citation, there are one institution whose number of total citations within all papers is more than 2000, three institutions with total citations more than 400, three institutions with total citations more than 300, and three institutions with total citations between 100 and 300. The highest average citations per article is in European Commission Joint Research Centre (37,8), it is followed by Politecnico di Milano (30,4) and Brunel Business School (30,2).
Also, according to Table 5, all institutions are in Europe, four of them are situated in the United Kingdom, more three in Italy.
Just two papers were cited more than 200 times, these papers were published by the scientists from Wageningen University & Research. Eight articles from seven institutions (except, Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Universität Göttingen and Cranfield School of Management) got in cited interval ≥ 100. Also, in cited interval ≥ 50 got 23 papers, and in in cited interval ≥ 10 got 80 articles.
To identify the most frequent keywords relevant to the area and to highlight the existing trends in the research field, the network of relationships between keywords (co-occurrence) was formed using VOSviewer (a reliable and effective tool to visualize the interaction between the main keywords in research). 371 keywords were selected for analysis (minimum number of occurrence of keywords ≥ 5). After the keywords reviewing, repeated words and irrelevant words (such as "Eurasia", "literature review" and others) were excluded from further consideration. At total 118 keywords were analyzed (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Network of relationships between keywords (based on Scopus Database), generated using VOSviewer
Thus, the generated network visualization between 118 keywords includes 7 clusters. Different clusters are illustrated in different colors. The same color of the nodes and keywords means that they belong to the same cluster. The first (most powerful) cluster (green cluster) forms around the keyword "food supply" (413 occurrences, total link strength -3329), this cluster includes the following main keywords: supply chain management, food safety, etc.; the second cluster (red cluster) forms around the keyword "sustainability" (128 occurrences, total link strength -912), includes the following main keywords: food production, food security, etc.; the third cluster (violet cluster) forms around the keyword "food waste" (97 occurrences, total link strength -834), includes the following main keywords: recycling, food loss, etc.; the fourth cluster (blue cluster) forms around the keyword "environmental impact" (61 occurrences, total link strength -708), includes the following main keywords: life cycle, environmental management, etc.; the fifth cluster (yellow cluster) forms around the keyword "sustainable development" (100 occurrences, total link strength -991), includes the following main keywords: energy utilization, sustainable supply chain management, etc.; the sixth cluster (orange cluster) forms around the keyword "food processing" (12 occurrences, total link strength -54); the seventh cluster (light blue cluster) forms around the keyword "inventory control" (5 occurrences, total link strength -29).
The integral result of the conducted research is the determination of the main scientific aspects in "food supply chain" field and the identification of the scientific gaps in this field. Obtained results not only show current state of publication activity within scientific problem, but also form a basis of further researches.
Conclusions. The article analyzes the concept of food supply chain using the bibliometric method and visualization tool. This paper adopts bibliometric analysis and scientific visualization method to analyze 1 084 Scopus papers.
According to achieved results, the rapid growth of publication activity in "food supply chain" field started after 2004. The largest number of publications was reached in 2020 and it was equal 210 papers.
Regarding the countries, the largest number of articles were published by the authors from the United Kingdom, it is followed by Italy and the United States. Also, six authors out of top 10 contributing authors are from the United Kingdom. So, the United Kingdom forms the most powerful network with other countries.
All top journals in the "food supply chain" field have high SNIP and are in Q1 or Q2. Most scientific papers are published in the following journals: "Journal of Cleaner Production", "British Food Journal" and "Sustainability".
The three most cited articles cover five research topics in the "food supply chain" field -sustainability, traceability, planning and optimization, social responsibility, and food waste. Total citation of these articles is equal 3486.
The top 10 institutions have published a total of 195 papers. All institutions are in Europe. Also, two papers with the affiliation of Wageningen University & Research were cited more than 200 times.
Additionally, keywords within the research field form 7 clusters which define main components of "food supply chain" concept and improve understanding of further research trends.
In the further works we will focus on the obtained results to identify gaps in the existing researches and ways of their overlapping to reach more fruitful scientific results.