Research Status and Trends of Agrobiodiversity and Traditional Knowledge Based on Bibliometric Analysis (1992–Mid-2022)
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
1. The manuscript requires editing for English language
2. The methodology lacks details on procedures used, especially on sampling and sampling criteria, study design, the data that was collected and how it was collected and statistical analysis of the data. The methology section should be divided into sub-headings to allow for clarity.
3. The results section has a lot of data but it is not clear how the data was obtained - there is no corresponding details of the procedures in the methodology
4. The discussion is almost lacking and the section that appears like a discussion (section 3.2.2) has information that not at all related to the data presented in the results section. Much of the information presented in this section is very general.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
We are grateful and honored to receive your review comments. First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude for your hard work on the author's paper. Your constructive review comments have greatly enriched the author's research paper and provided the author with many new ideas and professional help, which is the best affirmation of the author's research work; I fully accept your review comments, according to your relevant suggestions, the author has made significant adjustments and changes in the corresponding parts of the newly submitted paper, as detailed below.
Point 1: The manuscript requires editing for English language.
Response 1: Thank you for your sincere advice.
For the language problem of the article, the author analyzes the full-text sentence by sentence with the help of our peers with strong English expression skills and corrects the errors.
Point 2: The methodology lacks details on procedures used, especially on sampling and sampling criteria, study design, the data that was collected and how it was collected and statistical analysis of the data. The methology section should be divided into sub-headings to allow for clarity.
Response 2：Thank you for your sincere advice.
The author has added all the details about the procedure, including the selection of data, the study design, etc. The section on methodology has been added with subheadings and revised in more detail. For a more visual understanding of the study process, the author has added flow charts.
Details are as follows.
2.2 Methods of research
2.2.1 Bibliometric analysis
The current use of bibliometric analysis in review papers is becoming mature and familiar. More and more scholars are using visual analysis software to analyze issues related to agrobiodiversity or traditional knowledge research areas. Malapane used VOSviewer to study the development of indigenous knowledge in Africa for over 30 years. Ritter examined Brazilian ethnobotany by assessing research priorities, regions, and current issues. Liu analyzed research themes, evolutionary processes, and future trends in agroecosystems. However, there are currently no relevant review papers in the bibliometric analysis category that address the research areas of agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge.
VOSviewer, a commonly used software for knowledge mapping analysis, performs bibliometric analysis in scientific mapping knowledge, reducing the overlap of nodes and labels in expressing the relationship between scientific topics more clearly. We, therefore, chose to use VOSviewer for this analysis. In the VOSviewer network visualization diagram, the greater the importance of an item, the larger its labels and nodes; the links between objects represent their relevance, with thicker lines representing stronger and stronger relevance; and the colour of the items representing the cluster they belong to.
2.2.2 Research methodology
This study was based on the literature data for WOSCC. Firstly, Excel was used to conduct a preliminary statistical analysis of the annual number of publications, countries of publication, publication disciplines, authors of literature, and research institutions in agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge research according to the literature analysis search function that comes with WOS. The data were then exported from the WOSCC database in plain text format, and the VOS viewer version 1.6.18 was used to create a network visualization of the countries of publication, authors, institutions, and keywords in the research area. The trends and current status of the research fields of agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge are presented (See Figure 1).
Figure 1. General flowchart of bibliometric analysis.
Point 3: The results section has a lot of data but it is not clear how the data was obtained - there is no corresponding details of the procedures in the methodology
Response 3：Thank you for your sincere advice.
The author has added a method for obtaining the results section.
Details are as follows.
The ISI Web of Science Core Collection (WOSCC) is an authoritative and high-impact database of journals, books, and international academic collections in var-ious disciplines, including natural sciences, social sciences, biomedical sciences, engi-neering and technology, and arts and humanities. Therefore, this paper selects the WOSCC database as the basic data source and uses the advanced search function in the database with the search formula TS=("agricultural genetic diversity" or "agroecosystem diversity" or "agrobiodiversity" or "agricultural landscape diversity" or "agricultural species diversity") AND TS=("traditional ecological knowledge" or "traditional knowledge" or "local cultural practices" or "indigenous knowledge" or "local knowledge"). The search was conducted from the earliest date that WOS could find to 1 August 2022, and in order to clarify the documentary data for better analysis, we selected "Article" in "Document Types," "English" for "Languages," and obtained a total of 688 documents, which were manually screened for titles, keywords, and abstracts, and those not related to agrobiodiversity or traditional knowledge. After the manual screening of titles, keywords, and abstracts, and the elimination of documents that were not relevant to agrobiodiversity or traditional knowledge, 419 publications were obtained.
Point 4: The discussion is almost lacking and the section that appears like a discussion (section 3.2.2) has information that not at all related to the data presented in the results section. Much of the information presented in this section is very general.
Response 4：Thank you for your sincere advice.
The author has reorganised the discussion section to separate the description of the results from the discussion.
The detailed results are as follows.
4.2 Discussion
To further promote research in the field of agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge, based on the current research results, the following aspects should also be focused on in the future.
(1) In the current research field of agricultural biodiversity and traditional knowledge, scholars have more often explored the management role of traditional knowledge in agricultural biodiversity and its influence and contribution through qualitative methods such as small agricultural system management cases and structured interviews, which lack scientific objectivity, and need to explore more quantitative research methods as well as build a research system and improve the research framework from an overall and more macroscopic perspective.
(2) The current research mainly focuses on natural science and ecology, and most of the research is conducted in agroecosystems. However, the conservation of agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge is also related to local policies, indigenous people's willingness to preserve and pass on their knowledge, community development, and other social and human factors, so it is necessary to strengthen interdisciplinary research exchanges on the basis of the existing foundation and further expand the scope of disciplinary research in this field.
(3) Existing studies have not yet reached a unified definition of the relationship between agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge, and the lack of a definition of their important components has limited the exploration of the positive significance of traditional knowledge for agrobiodiversity conservation.
Point 5: The abstract does not have the highlights of the findings
Response 5：Thank you for your sincere advice.
The author fully agrees with your comments and has rewritten the abstract.
The details are as follows.
Abstract: Currently, traditional knowledge is a favoured research area in agrobiodiversity conservation at home and abroad and plays a vital role in the sustainable use of ecosystems, livelihood support, and food security. In this paper, the WOS core database was used as the data source to statistically analyse the literature on the topic of agricultural biodiversity and traditional knowledge research. The results show that (1) the number of articles published in agricultural biodiversity and traditional knowledge research has been increasing yearly. (2) the United States is the most influential country in this field of research, and other leading countries include India, Mexico, Germany, and Italy. (3) The existing research is mainly in the field of natural science, and the Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine is the most crucial journal in terms of the number of articles published. (4) Neither the author nor the institutional collaboration network has formed a close transnational collaboration network. (5) Popular research in the field includes livelihood support, conservation of local breeds, traditional agroecosystems and biodiversity conservation. We propose to strengthen the exploration of quantitative analysis research methods, strengthen interdisciplinary research exchanges, expand the breadth of disciplinary research, and clarify the definition connotation and research levels of research.
Point 6: Language requires correction
Response 6：Thank you for your sincere advice.
For the language problem of the article, the author analyzes the full-text sentence by sentence with the help of our peers with strong English expression skills and corrects the errors.
Point 7: The methodology lacks details on the following:
- sampling and sampling criteria
- study design
- what data was collected and how they were collected
- statistical analysis of the data
Response 7：Thank you for your sincere advice.
The author adds details on the missing methodological aspects on Lines:110-124 Lines:198-235
Point 8: The methodology should have subheadings
Response 8：Thank you for your sincere advice.
For methodological subheadings, the author has added on the Lines:109 125 126, and 197.
In addition, the author has added flow charts.
Point 9: Use English language for axis labelling
Response 9：Thank you for your sincere advice.
The author has modified the language used for the axes and apologises for any inconvenience caused.
Point 10: Much on the information provided here is not related to the results of the study.
Response 10：Thank you for your sincere advice.
The content in this section is a summary of research hotspot content based on keyword clustering analysis, with the author matching keyword clustering information with hotspot content.
(The specific changes can be found in the revised manuscript at Lines：1408,1460,1513,1551)
At this point, the author must once again thank you for your valuable corrections! I hope you will let me know if you find any shortcomings again during the review process, and I will take them seriously. Thank you again!
Author Response File: 
Author Response.doc
Reviewer 2 Report
Research status and trends of agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge based on bibliometric analysis
The topic addressed by the paper is surely of interest. Nevertheless, I find the paper poorly researched and not very useful.
The scope of the paper is not very clear, and to me it is affected by major methodological problem… keywords used by the authors in their search in the WOS:
1) embrace some widely different subjects… agricultural genetic diversity, landscape diversity, local knowledge … are different/very different issues, and should be treated differently. Mixing them up does not allow us to properly address the scale and dimension of diversity e.g., crop genetic diversity is different from landscape diversity …
2) are limited and may miss papers where other keywords are used instead. A number of other entries should have searched for e.g., crop diversity, crop biodiversity, crop agrobiodiversity, crop agro-biodiversity, cropping system diversity/agrobiodiversity/agro-biodiversity, ethnobotany may be included too ... I am sure that by adding these, plus others key words (e.g., crop genetic variability, landraces biodiversity …), many more papers could have been found (tens of thousands).
What about animal biodiversity and aquatic biodiversity? … pest biodiversity, soil biodiversity?
Due to the issues listed above, what report in Results section are also problematic
Other relevant issues that have to be highlighted
The authors do not provide a review of the literature, have similar works already attempted or is this work the first of this sort? Many authors covered the topics addressed by this paper…
See for example Devra Jarvis (Principal Scientist at Bioversity International)
https://www.bioversityinternational.org/about-us/who-we-are/staff-bios/single-details-bios/jarvis-devra-i/
among her books https://www.bioversityinternational.org/e-library/publications/detail/managing-biodiversity-in-agricultural-ecosystems/
Harold Brookfield see for example http://cup.columbia.edu/book/exploring-agrodiversity/9780231102339
Ivette Perfecto https://seas.umich.edu/research/faculty/ivette-perfecto
or historical scholars such as Miguel Altieri and Stephen Gliessman (two key figures in agroecology),
see the list of authors in (2012) Biodiversity in Agriculture https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/biodiversity-in-agriculture/39EB35348FB97982E15683DBAAEFC07A
FAO has many reports e.g., https://www.fao.org/3/CA3129EN/ca3129en.pdf
Biodiversity international e.g. https://www.bioversityinternational.org/fileadmin/user_upload/online_library/Mainstreaming_Agrobiodiversity/Mainstreaming_Agrobiodiversity_Sustainable_Food_Systems_WEB.pdf
About 30% of the papers cited are in Chinese. I am not against citing works from national journals, in the national language (although they are probably of minor scientific relevance). Nevertheless, this has to make sense. In this case, given the topic of the paper, and with tens of thousands of papers and hundreds of major books available (in English), I do not see the need to refer to Chinese literature in Chinese.
Definition for the keywords should be provided
>Figure 1. Number of papers published in the field of agricultural biodiversity and traditional knowledge from 1992 to 2022.
Why such a drop in 2022? Maybe because just a few months were considered?
> Table 1. Top 11 countries or regions in the number of related literature.
To have a proper comparison it should be done per number of researches in the field, per investment, as the % on the total publications … we should have a reference to which refer too … what’s the point of comparing in absolute term China (1,500 million people, GDP 11,000us$/capita) with e.g., Nicaragua (6 million people, GDP 2,000us$/capita).
>3.2.1. The country of published articles on biofertilizers
Biofertilizers? A typo?
>International research on agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge began in 1992.
Reference? Many works before 1992.
1990 - Cary Fowler and Pat Mooney, Shattering: Food, Politics, and the Loss of Genetic Diversity
1987 – Altieri and Merrick, 1987 conservation of crop genetic resources through maintenance of traditional farming ecosystems. Economic Botany 45 153
1976 - Chang, T. T. The Rice Cultures. Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. London B, 275: 143-157
1971 - Harlan, J.R. Agricultural Origins: Centers and Noncenters. Science, 174: 468-474.
1926 - Vavilov, N.I. (1926). Centres of Origin of Cultivated Plants. Bull. Appl. Bot. Genet. Plant Breed., 16: 1-248
1886 - Candolle, A. De (1886). Origin of Cultivated Plants. New York: Appleton
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
We are grateful and honored to receive your review comments. First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude for your hard work on the author's paper. Your constructive review comments have greatly enriched the author's research paper and provided the author with many new ideas and professional help, which is the best affirmation of the author's research work; I fully accept your review comments, according to your relevant suggestions, the author has made significant adjustments and changes in the corresponding parts of the newly submitted paper, as detailed below.
Point 1: The scope of the paper is not very clear, and to me it is affected by major methodological problem… keywords used by the authors in their search in the WOS:
(1) embrace some widely different subjects… agricultural genetic diversity, landscape diversity, local knowledge … are different/very different issues, and should be treated differently. Mixing them up does not allow us to properly address the scale and dimension of diversity e.g., crop genetic diversity is different from landscape diversity …
(2) are limited and may miss papers where other keywords are used instead. A number of other entries should have searched for e.g., crop diversity, crop biodiversity, crop agrobiodiversity, crop agro-biodiversity, cropping system diversity/agrobiodiversity/agro-biodiversity, ethnobotany may be included too ... I am sure that by adding these, plus others key words (e.g., crop genetic variability, landraces biodiversity …), many more papers could have been found (tens of thousands).
What about animal biodiversity and aquatic biodiversity? … pest biodiversity, soil biodiversity?
Due to the issues listed above, what report in Results section are also problematic.
Response 1：Thank you for your sincere advice.
（1）Agro-landscape diversity is a component of agrobiodiversity and belongs to a different level of research. Moreover, the keywords of agrobiodiversity were searched jointly with local knowledge because a separate search would only yield literature related to agrobiodiversity or traditional knowledge. However, this paper wanted to get literature where the research topic included both agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge.
（2）In response, the author has revised the search terms, added "agricultural species diversity" to the keyword search, re-screened the literature, and reorganised the entire text, revising the analysis.
Point 2: Other relevant issues that have to be highlighted
The authors do not provide a review of the literature, have similar works already attempted or is this work the first of this sort? Many authors covered the topics addressed by this paper…
Response 2：Thank you for your sincere advice.
Previously, some scholars have used bibliometric analysis to conduct reviews of individual topics related to agrobiodiversity or traditional knowledge, but no scholars have used bibliometric methods to write review papers combining the two topics.
The specific changes are as follows.
The current use of bibliometric analysis in review papers is becoming mature and familiar. More and more scholars are using visual analysis software to analyze issues related to agrobiodiversity or traditional knowledge research areas. Malapane used VOSviewer to study the development of indigenous knowledge in Africa for over 30 years. Ritter examined Brazilian ethnobotany by assessing research priorities, regions, and current issues. Liu analyzed research themes, evolutionary processes, and future trends in agroecosystems. However, there are currently no relevant review papers in the bibliometric analysis category that address the research areas of agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge.
Point 3: About 30% of the papers cited are in Chinese. I am not against citing works from national journals, in the national language (although they are probably of minor scientific relevance). Nevertheless, this has to make sense. In this case, given the topic of the paper, and with tens of thousands of papers and hundreds of major books available (in English), I do not see the need to refer to Chinese literature in Chinese.
Response 3：Thank you for your sincere advice.
For the sake of the need to comprehensively summarise the research and relevant literature, the Chinese literature I refer to in the text is mainly cited for their proposed definitions and relevant case studies.
Point 4: Definition for the keywords should be provided
Response 4：Thank you for your sincere advice.
The author has added the definition of keywords to the supplement.
Details are as follows.
Agrobiodiversity is the wild, semi-domesticated, and domesticated species of all plants and animals associated with food and agricultural production that are artificially constructed, managed and used, and the agroecosystems and agricultural landscapes formed by multiple species, which are the result of the interaction between nature and human society and have an essential role in socio-economic, cultural, environmental, and food security aspects. International organizations such as IDRC define agro-biodiversity as biodiversity related to food and production, including the diversity of plants, animals, and microorganisms in terms of genes, species, and ecosystems. Thus, in the study, agrobiodiversity can be divided into four components: agricultural genetic diversity, agricultural species diversity, agroecosystem diversity, and agricultural landscape diversity.
Traditional knowledge (TK), also known as indigenous knowledge, is defined by the CBD as any indigenous knowledge, innovation or custom, or tradition of a local community that is important in the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and practices.
Point 5: >Figure 1. Number of papers published in the field of agricultural biodiversity and traditional knowledge from 1992 to 2022.
Why such a drop in 2022? Maybe because just a few months were considered?
Response 5：Thank you for your sincere advice.
The decline in the number of papers in 2022 is related to the search deadline, which for this paper was 1 August 2022, so the number of papers in this article is not the number for the whole of 2022.
Point 6: > Table 1. Top 11 countries or regions in the number of related literature.
To have a proper comparison it should be done per number of researches in the field, per investment, as the % on the total publications … we should have a reference to which refer too … what’s the point of comparing in absolute term China (1,500 million people, GDP 11,000us$/capita) with e.g., Nicaragua (6 million people, GDP 2,000us$/capita).
Response 6：Thank you for your sincere advice.
The comparison of publications between countries indicates the leading research forces in a field of study. As well as exploring cooperation between countries, as collaborative exchanges between different countries can promote the development of related disciplines.
Point 7: >3.2.1. The country of published articles on biofertilizers
Biofertilizers? A typo?
Response 7： Thank you for your comments.
We apologize for the extra work you have added to our inattentive language translation process. This refers to the selection of Countries active in published literature. We have corrected these problems.
The detailed modifications are as follows:
Point 8: >International research on agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge began in 1992.
Reference? Many works before 1992.
Response 8：Thank you for your sincere advice.
The literature search for this paper was conducted using the WOSCC database, where the authors' earliest literature on agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge was found in 1992. I apologise for not making this issue clear in the text; for this reason, the authors have highlighted the source of the literature in the text.
At this point, the author must once again thank you for your valuable corrections! I hope you will let me know if you find any shortcomings again during the review process, and I will take them seriously. Thank you again!
Author Response File: Author Response.doc
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have added the information that was missing in the original manuscript and the document is now well organized with different sections interconnected.
However, the authors should have removed track changes before submission to make themanuscript easy to read. Highlighting the changes with a different colour would have been adequate.
Final language check will be necessary before pubication of the manuscript.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
We are grateful and honored to receive your review comments. First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude for your hard work on the author's paper. Your constructive review comments have greatly enriched the author's research paper and provided the author with many new ideas and professional help, which is the best affirmation of the author's research work; I fully accept your review comments, according to your relevant suggestions, the author has made significant adjustments and changes in the corresponding parts of the newly submitted paper, as detailed below.
Point 1: However, the authors should have removed track changes before submission to make themanuscript easy to read. Highlighting the changes with a different colour would have been adequate.
Response 1: Thank you for your sincere advice.
The author has made changes to the issue and provided an easy to read manuscript.
Point 2: Final language check will be necessary before pubication of the manuscript.
Response 2：Thank you for your sincere advice.
The author has embellished and revised the language of the manuscript.
At this point, the author must once again thank you for your valuable corrections! I hope you will let me know if you find any shortcomings again during the review process, and I will take them seriously. Thank you again!
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
I wish to thank the authors for having edited the paper. Nevertheless, to me the paper still suffers from important weakness, and requires more thinking and more analysis/results. Some sections are confused, and some statements do not make sense as they stand. Please, see the comments.
Comments
Research status and trends of agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge based on bibliometric analysis
To be changed in
Research status and trends of agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge based on bibliometric analysis 1992- mid 2022
You may better close the window to 2021
English has to be properly checked/edited.
It is still not clear what this work is about. This is what the authors report in methodology
L 85 “Therefore, to better realize the protection of agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge, This paper uses bibliometric analysis to investigate the performance of existing literature in agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge research.”
A bit confused
L 90 Summarize the progress and achievements in agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge research to make suggestions and recommendations for developing agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge.
Confused, and some important aspects have not been investigated. For example:
* which regions have been investigated the most? This cannot be derived from affiliations, as, for example, some Europeans institutions carry on their works in other continents (so do many Us universities).
* which topics/issues have been investigated the most? (ses comments L 379)
L 107 The search was conducted from the earliest date WOS could find to 1 August 2022
Please report the date (1992?)
L 213 in the top three countries in terms of citations per article, with 69.83, 59.69, and 58.54, respectively,
69.83 citation per article? How is that possible? This is obviously an average, but it should be properly indicated, tab 1 follows later one, so that this sentence may confuse the reader, as it is not clear to what this figure refer to.
L 228 The active cooperation between the various countries not only promotes progress in research on agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge but also increases the scientific capacity of each country.
Is this proved or just your opinion? If it is proved pleased quote the references, if it is your opinion, please make it clear.
L 249 Table 1
Proportion of publication in recent three years, the total is much larger than 100%, why is it so? (not clear)
Many researchers have multiple academic affiliations, sometime in different countries. Due to the relatively small number of papers considered (about 400), this may introduce biases in the result. Has this issue been addressed? It does not seem so.
L379 3.3.2. Research priorities on agricultural biodiversity and traditional knowledge
It is not clear if the list (1,2,3...) represents a rank or it is just a list. If it represents a rank (first, most relevant priority etc) it should be explained how this has been assessed. I understand that stats has been used but it not clear how relevant is a topic compared to the others.
I do not find satisfactory how
L 537 3) The key words in the field of agricultural biodiversity and traditional knowledge research are mainly in “conservation”,” management”,” land use”, “ecosystem services”, “ethnobotany”, “food security”, etc.
Sorry, but “etc.” is not acceptable. This is not a negligible issue, but it flags a simplistic approach to this work.
L 548 4.2 Discussion
I find this section quite confused
L 577 build a research system and improve the research framework from an overall and more macroscopic perspective
What does this mean?
L 566 “(3) Existing studies have not yet reached a unified definition of the relationship between agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge”
I am not sure this statement makes sense
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
We are grateful and honored to receive your review comments. First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude for your hard work on the author's paper. Your constructive review comments have greatly enriched the author's research paper and provided the author with many new ideas and professional help, which is the best affirmation of the author's research work; I fully accept your review comments, according to your relevant suggestions, the author has made significant adjustments and changes in the corresponding parts of the newly submitted paper, as detailed below.
Point 1: Research status and trends of agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge based on bibliometric analysis
To be changed in
Research status and trends of agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge based on bibliometric analysis 1992- mid 2022
You may better close the window to 2021
Response 1: Thank you for your sincere advice.
The author has revised the title and the corresponding section of the paper has been marked.
Point 2: English has to be properly checked/edited.
Response 2: Thank you for your sincere advice.
The author has embellished and revised the language of the manuscript.
Point 3: It is still not clear what this work is about. This is what the authors report in methodology
L 85 “Therefore, to better realize the protection of agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge, This paper uses bibliometric analysis to investigate the performance of existing literature in agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge research.”
A bit confused
Response 3: Thank you for your sincere advice.
The author has changed the relevant expressions in this section to read in the main.
The world is paying more and more attention to the field of agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge, and publications are gradually increasing. However, to our knowledge, no relevant bibliometric analysis review papers address agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge research fields. More scholars use bibliometric analysis and visualization analysis software to analyze issues related to agricultural biodiversity or traditional knowledge research. Malapane used VOSviewer to study the development of indigenous knowledge in Africa for over 30 years [18]. Ritter examined Brazilian ethnobotany by assessing research priorities, regions, and current issues [19]. Liu analyzed research themes, evolutionary processes, and future trends in agroecosystems [20]. Therefore, in order to better understand the current research status and development trend in the field of agricultural biodiversity and traditional knowledge, this paper uses bibliometric analysis to identify the major research countries, research institutions, popular journals, and representative scholars in this field, and to discover the research themes in this field, to provide suggestions and opinions for the development of agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge.
Point 4: L 90 Summarize the progress and achievements in agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge research to make suggestions and recommendations for developing agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge.
Confused, and some important aspects have not been investigated. For example:
* which regions have been investigated the most? This cannot be derived from affiliations, as, for example, some Europeans institutions carry on their works in other continents (so do many Us universities).
* which topics/issues have been investigated the most? (ses comments L 379)
Response 4: Thank you for your sincere advice.
The author has made the relevant changes, and the result is as follows.
Therefore, in order to better understand the current research status and development trend in the field of agricultural biodiversity and traditional knowledge, this paper uses bibliometric analysis to identify the central research countries, research institutions, popular journals, and representative scholars in this field, and to discover the research themes in this field, to provide suggestions and opinions for the development of agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge.
(1) Mexico was investigated the most in this research, as described below.
It is worth noting that among the 54 keywords, "Mexico" is the only keyword that ap-pears in the region, with 12 occurrences, indicating that much research in this field is carried out in Mexico.
(2) Keyword clustering means hotspot analysis, meaning that the themes of conservation of local varieties, agricultural landscape change, livelihood support and agroforestry systems were investigated the most in the study. The details are described in 3.3.2
Point 5: L 107 The search was conducted from the earliest date WOS could find to 1 August 2022
Please report the date (1992?)
Response 5: Thank you for your sincere advice.
The author has added to this section.
Point 6: L 213 in the top three countries in terms of citations per article, with 69.83, 59.69, and 58.54, respectively,
69.83 citation per article? How is that possible? This is obviously an average, but it should be properly indicated, tab 1 follows later one, so that this sentence may confuse the reader, as it is not clear to what this figure refer to.
Response 6: Thank you for your sincere advice.
Thank you for the reminder that the citation rate here is the average number of citations per paper and that the authors have made changes as follows.
Although Spain, Brazil and Canada are not in the top positions in terms of the number of articles published, they are in the top three in terms of average citations per article, at 69.83, 59.69 and 58.54, respectively, indicating the importance of these countries in the field of agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge research.
Point 7: L 228 The active cooperation between the various countries not only promotes progress in research on agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge but also increases the scientific capacity of each country.
Is this proved or just your opinion? If it is proved pleased quote the references, if it is your opinion, please make it clear.
Response 7: Thank you for your sincere advice.
Thank you for the reminder that the author has made an additional literature citation there.
Point 8: L 249 Table 1
Proportion of publication in recent three years, the total is much larger than 100%, why is it so? (not clear)
Many researchers have multiple academic affiliations, sometime in different countries. Due to the relatively small number of papers considered (about 400), this may introduce biases in the result. Has this issue been addressed? It does not seem so.
Response 8: Thank you for your sincere advice.
(1) The ratio of the number of articles published in the last three years to the number of articles published in the country is meant as a proportion of the number of articles published in the last three years, not as a proportion of the number of articles occupying all the literature.
(2) The VOSviewer software ignores some articles with several joint institutions greater than 25 in the default setting to avoid bias in the network graph. The same settings apply to the country and author collaboration networks.
Point 9: L379 3.3.2. Research priorities on agricultural biodiversity and traditional knowledge
It is not clear if the list (1,2,3...) represents a rank or it is just a list. If it represents a rank (first, most relevant priority etc) it should be explained how this has been assessed. I understand that stats has been used but it not clear how relevant is a topic compared to the others.
Response 9: Thank you for your sincere advice.
This section is a classification of hotspots according to the keyword clustering diagram. The different colors and the keywords included in it reflect the different research hotspots. The author has modified the classification of the keywords that are the focus of each cluster, mainly as follows.
(1) Cluster 1: Conservation of landrace.
Cluster 1, represented by red color, is the largest in the figure and is related to the conservation of local varieties. This cluster has 22 keywords, mainly related to conservation measures (e.g. "home gardens", "in situ conservation"), genetic diversity (e.g. genetic diversity", "landraces", "crop diversity"), farmer practices ("farmers "" domestication "" "cultivation").
(2) Cluster 2 and Cluster 5: Agricultural landscape change
Cluster 2 is represented by the color green, and cluster 5 by the color purple. Both clusters are related to agricultural landscape change. They have a total of 17 keywords, mainly including biodiversity ("biodiversity" "biodiversity conservation"), land-use change ( "land-use" "agricultural intensification"), the impact of landscape change ("ecosystem services ""species richness" "habitat") cultural landscapes ("community" "biocultural diversity" "cultural landscapes") vocabulary.
(3) Cluster 3: Livelihood support.
Cluster 3 is represented by the blue color and is related to the livelihood support category. This cluster has eight keywords, mainly including agriculture ("agriculture," "agroecology," "sustainable agriculture "), factors affecting livelihoods ("intensification," "climate change," "food sovereignty")
(4) Agroforestry systems
Cluster 4 is represented by yellow color and is related to agroforestry ecosystem functions. This cluster has seven keywords, mainly including agroforestry systems ("systems" "agroforestry"), functions ("resilience ", "adaptation", "sustainability"), traditional knowledge ("local knowledge ""ecological knowledge")
Point 10: L 537 3) The key words in the field of agricultural biodiversity and traditional knowledge research are mainly in “conservation”,” management”,” land use”, “ecosystem services”, “ethnobotany”, “food security”, etc.
Sorry, but “etc.” is not acceptable. This is not a negligible issue, but it flags a simplistic approach to this work.
Response 10: Thank you for your sincere advice.
The author has added the table there and also made relevant additional notes. The details are as follows.
We list the keywords that appear more than 20 times in Table 5, "Occurrences" represents the number of times the keyword appears, and "Total link strength" represents the number of times the keyword co-occurs with other keywords, i.e., link strength.
After excluding the search terms, the top 10 most frequent keywords include: "conservation", "diversity", "management ", "landscapes", "ecosystem service", "ethnobotany ", "food security ", "biodiversity conservation", "systems", "genetic diversity". The keywords with the highest number of occurrences and connection intensity are related to biodiversity conservation, which is the study of agricultural biodiversity and traditional knowledge. Moreover, due to the current international demand for biodiversity conservation, biodiversity conservation will remain an important direction for research. It is worth noting that among the 54 keywords, "Mexico" is the only keyword that appears in the region, with 12 occurrences, indicating that much research in this field is carried out in Mexico.
Table 5. High frequency keywords in agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge research
|
Keywords |
Occurrences |
Total link strength |
Keywords |
Occurrences |
Total link strength |
|
biodiversity |
113 |
462 |
home gardens |
27 |
133 |
|
diversity |
112 |
409 |
resilience |
25 |
120 |
|
conservation |
112 |
441 |
agriculture |
25 |
108 |
|
agrobiodiversity |
105 |
383 |
landraces |
23 |
87 |
|
management |
83 |
358 |
agroforestry |
23 |
103 |
|
knowledge |
49 |
209 |
indigenous knowledge |
23 |
84 |
|
land-use |
49 |
206 |
dynamics |
22 |
98 |
|
ecosystem services |
47 |
194 |
medicinal plants |
21 |
77 |
|
ethnobotany |
41 |
157 |
local knowledge |
21 |
78 |
|
food security |
41 |
164 |
sustainability |
21 |
84 |
|
traditional knowledge |
38 |
143 |
community |
21 |
77 |
|
biodiversity conservation |
31 |
117 |
forest |
21 |
85 |
|
systems |
31 |
140 |
landscapes |
20 |
79 |
|
traditional ecological knowledge |
31 |
127 |
species richness |
20 |
77 |
|
genetic diversity |
28 |
112 |
|
|
|
Point 11: L 548 4.2 Discussion
I find this section quite confused
Response 11: Thank you for your sincere advice.
The author has revised the section as follows.
The author has rewritten this section, see 4. discussion and 5. summary.
Point 12: L 577 build a research system and improve the research framework from an overall and more macroscopic perspective
What does this mean?
Response 12: Thank you for your sincere advice.
The author has revised the section as follows.
In the current research field of agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge, scholars more often explore the management role of traditional knowledge in agrobiodiversity and its impact and contribution through qualitative research methods such as small agricultural system management cases and structured interviews, which lack scientific objectivity. There is a need to explore more quantitative research methods, expand research perspectives and innovate research methods so traditional knowledge in the local context can be connected with modern technology.
Point 13: L 566 “(3) Existing studies have not yet reached a unified definition of the relationship between agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge”
I am not sure this statement makes sense
Response 13: Thank you for your sincere advice.
The author has revised the section as follows.
Capacity building for agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge conservation cannot be limited to local communities and indigenous people but also requires cooperation with research organizations, governments, and other stakeholders to achieve more stable development. In addition, as the attention and importance of agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge increases, future research will focus on the development of relevant policies and regulations, as well as the assessment of the impact and conservation results of the existing policies, in order to adjust the implementation of policies and further improve the sustainable development of the region.
At this point, the author must once again thank you for your valuable corrections! I hope you will let me know if you find any shortcomings again during the review process, and I will take them seriously. Thank you again!
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
