A Bibliometric Analysis of the Scientific Literature on Biostimulants

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

thanks - very interesting, informative and conclusive!

I have some minor suggestions:

e.g. line 42 ... plant growth and health. (add health)

e.g. line 61 specify - at least once: US $

Tables - personally I am not really happy with 'centered' in tables, only when reasonable. I suggest to think the formatting over, in some cases e.g. left-aligned might be the better choice.

e.g. line 508 ... agriculture and horticulture (add horticulture). Still there is a clear differentiation between these two ways of plant production.

Other comments to reflect on:

There are more terms in use than 'biostimulants' (which today appears to be the one of widest use) - e.g. plant-strengtheners. It might be worthwile to include these in the introduction. It is ok to focus on 'biostimulants' only, but that might result in a loss of information.

'Biostimulants' appeared in the German speaking countries as "Pflanzenstärkungsmittel" - probably in the course of the rise of organic growing; accompanying the fact that the majority of pesticides are not permitted in the regulations. I miss this points - the relevance of biostimulants in organics - where they play an important role as agrochemicals.

You mention 'more than 1000 journal articles' - and I wonder on which basis you made the decision of referencing out of these - there is a far lower number in the literature.

Thanks again!

Author Response

Dear Reviewers,

We appreciate the time and efforts that have been dedicated to reading and providing feedback on our manuscript, and we are very grateful for the valuable comments and suggestions. We have incorporated all the suggestions made by the reviewers. The changes are highlighted within the manuscript in revision mode. Please see below for a point-by-point response to the reviewers' comments and concerns. All page numbers refer to the revised manuscript file with tracked changes.

Dear authors,

thanks - very interesting, informative and conclusive!

I have some minor suggestions:

e.g. line 42 ... plant growth and health. (add health)

               Thanks for pointing this out, we agree with the suggestion, and we added health in the text.

e.g. line 61 specify - at least once: US $

               Thanks for pointing this out; we fixed it

Tables - personally I am not really happy with 'centered' in tables, only when reasonable. I suggest to think the formatting over, in some cases e.g. left-aligned might be the better choice.

Although we agree with the reviewer's comment and preference, the tables have been formatted according to the journal’s instructions for authors.

e.g. line 508 ... agriculture and horticulture (add horticulture). Still there is a clear differentiation between these two ways of plant production.

               Thanks for pointing this out; horticulture was added.

Other comments to reflect on:

There are more terms in use than 'biostimulants' (which today appears to be the one of widest use) - e.g. plant-strengtheners. It might be worthwile to include these in the introduction. It is ok to focus on 'biostimulants' only, but that might result in a loss of information.

We think this is an excellent suggestion; we have acknowledged the other terms that have been used in the past to call what is now referred to as biostimulants in the introduction (lines 42-44) and in the limitations.

'Biostimulants' appeared in the German speaking countries as "Pflanzenstärkungsmittel" - probably in the course of the rise of organic growing; accompanying the fact that the majority of pesticides are not permitted in the regulations. I miss this points - the relevance of biostimulants in organics - where they play an important role as agrochemicals.

We agree with the reviewer's suggestion, and since the role of biostimulants in organic farming did not emerge from the bibliometric analysis, we included it in the introduction (ll. 86-90).

You mention 'more than 1000 journal articles' - and I wonder on which basis you made the decision of referencing out of these - there is a far lower number in the literature.

Citing 1000 documents would not be feasible, and we realize that this is a bit of a structural problem of bibliometric analyses, that is, having to write an introduction to a very large body of literature without using the bibliometric tools. Our approach was to include previous reviews and the most accredited sources, especially in terms of citations but not only, but also consider more recent contributions.

Thanks again!

We are very grateful for the review. 

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

The manuscript addresses an interesting research topic. The paper is well written. I have only a few comments:

• Abstract: There is no research conclusion. I suggest to present "the most productive countries and journals, (...) the major research streams and perspectives" regarding biostimulants. Furthermore, I advise to indicate "aspects that have had little consideration in the current scientific literature". (L: 21-23)
• Figure 3 - under the graph explain what the different font size of hotspots keywords means.
• In my opinion, it is appropriate to place tables and figures in the text of the manuscript as close as possible after they are first quoted. For this reason, I propose moving Figure 3 to the end of subsection 3.2. High frequency keywords over time (after a discussion of the data presented). The same comment applies to Figures 4 and 5.

Author Response

Dear Reviewers,

We appreciate the time and efforts that have been dedicated to reading and providing feedback on our manuscript, and we are very grateful for the valuable comments and suggestions. We have incorporated all the suggestions made by the reviewers. The changes are highlighted within the manuscript in revision mode. Please see below for a point-by-point response to the reviewers' comments and concerns. All page numbers refer to the revised manuscript file with tracked changes.

Dear Authors,

The manuscript addresses an interesting research topic. The paper is well written. I have only a few comments:

Abstract: There is no research conclusion. I suggest to present "the most productive countries and journals, (...) the major research streams and perspectives" regarding biostimulants. Furthermore, I advise to indicate "aspects that have had little consideration in the current scientific literature" (L: 21-23)

• Thanks for the suggestion; we have added more information about the conclusions in the abstract. It was not possible to present the most productive countries and journals due to word limits and to the risk of trivialization of the results in such a short space. We have added informations about the aspects that received little consideration.

Figure 3 - under the graph explain what the different font size of hotspots keywords means.

• Thank you for the suggestion; a note was added to explain the meaning of the different sizes (frequency).

In my opinion, it is appropriate to place tables and figures in the text of the manuscript as close as possible after they are first quoted. For this reason, I propose moving Figure 3 to the end of subsection 3.2. High frequency keywords over time (after a discussion of the data presented). The same comment applies to Figures 4 and 5.

• Thanks for pointing this out; we have moved all the figures according to the suggestion.

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript entitled 'A bibliometric analysis of the scientific literature on biostimulants' of the authors Stefano Corsi, Giordano Ruggeri , Anita Zamboni, Prinsi Bhakti, Luca Espen, Antonio Ferrante, Martina Noseda, Zeno Varanini, Alessio Scarafoni is very actual and significant for biostimulant science, relevant and important for a wide range of potential readers.

Definitely, this manuscript should be recommended for publication in Agronomy.

At the same time, there are some aspects should be clarified.

 

Comments and suggestions at the first stage:

 

1. It is necessary to clarify the criteria by which the data for Table 4 "Top 15 most productive countries in biostimulant research" were obtained.

How was it quantified?

How was the belonging of the authors of the articles to a particular country determined?

 

2. It appears that in Table 5, in some cases, the quantitative values of citation indicated not quite correctly. Must be rechecked and corrected on the date of Aprile 2022.

 

3. There is potential to strengthen the conceptualization in the manuscript. Please, do it if possible for you.

 

4. There could be potential to rewrite and re-edit both the abstract and the manuscript with use of additional analysis (if any) and publications to broaden and deepen the manuscript content.

 

5. It is desirable to verify figures, tables, all calculations and all these with appropriate consequences.

 

6. It is necessary to verify all authors earlier publications to exclude the risk of self-plagiarism.

 

7. If the authors have previously published articles related to the research topic and not discussed in this manuscript, then it is necessary to refer these and explain the originality of this manuscript.

Author Response

Dear Reviewers,

We appreciate the time and efforts that have been dedicated to reading and providing feedback on our manuscript, and we are very grateful for the valuable comments and suggestions. We have incorporated all the suggestions made by the reviewers. The changes are highlighted within the manuscript in revision mode. Please see below for a point-by-point response to the reviewers' comments and concerns. All page numbers refer to the revised manuscript file with tracked changes.

 

The manuscript entitled 'A bibliometric analysis of the scientific literature on biostimulants' of the authors Stefano Corsi, Giordano Ruggeri , Anita Zamboni, Prinsi Bhakti, Luca Espen, Antonio Ferrante, Martina Noseda, Zeno Varanini, Alessio Scarafoni is very actual and significant for biostimulant science, relevant and important for a wide range of potential readers.

Definitely, this manuscript should be recommended for publication in Agronomy.

At the same time, there are some aspects should be clarified.

Comments and suggestions at the first stage:

It is necessary to clarify the criteria by which the data for Table 4 "Top 15 most productive countries in biostimulant research" were obtained. How was it quantified? How was the belonging of the authors of the articles to a particular country determined? 

• We agree with the suggestion, we have added in the text that this statistic was obtained considering only the affiliation of the corresponding author for each document (lines 235-236).

It appears that in Table 5, in some cases, the quantitative values of citation indicated not quite correctly. Must be rechecked and corrected on the date of Aprile 2022.

• The observation is correct, but the document analyzes a database downloaded in February 2022, in fact, the entire analysis represents the state of the art of literature as of February 2022. This is also consistent with the majority of the bibliometric analysis already published in the literature.

There is potential to strengthen the conceptualization in the manuscript. Please, do it if possible for you.

• We really appreciate the comment, and we believe that the reviewers' input helped reinforce the paper's conceptualization.

There could be potential to rewrite and re-edit both the abstract and the manuscript with use of additional analysis (if any) and publications to broaden and deepen the manuscript content.

• The analyses we have carried out are consistent with the most recent bibliometric studies, and even if we are aware that they could always be expanded, we have chosen a very high level digital library (Webofscience) that is renowed to be broad and comprehensive. Furthermore, widening the spectrum of investigation could have an undesirable effect of excessive derealization and lack of specialization on a topic.

It is desirable to verify figures, tables, all calculations and all these with appropriate consequences.

• Thanks for reminding us to verify tables and calculations; we indeed found an incongruence in the calculation of the percentages in Table 3 that has now been fixed. To explain better, in the previous version we have calculated the percentage using the total number of research categories, not considering that several documents fill in more than one of them.

It is necessary to verify all authors earlier publications to exclude the risk of self-plagiarism. 

• We are truly sorry for the mistake; we forgot to remove an older version of the manuscript from a draft and to copy-paste the new one; all the sections have been reviewed and fixed.

If the authors have previously published articles related to the research topic and not discussed in this manuscript, then it is necessary to refer these and explain the originality of this manuscript.

• Thanks for the comment, if we understand the suggestion correctly, this should not be the case.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

In Table 5, do you only provide data for citing papers that cover papers with studies on biostimulants only?
Are citing articles from the non-biostimulant field excluded?
The fact is that if you consider all the citing articles, then the number of citations will be much more.
For example, the number of citations for Calvo et al. in WoS = 506?
The same for other cited papers.

Author Response

In Table 5, do you only provide data for citing papers that cover papers with studies on biostimulants only? Are citing articles from the non-biostimulant field excluded? The fact is that if you consider all the citing articles, then the number of citations will be much more.
For example, the number of citations for Calvo et al. in WoS = 506?
The same for other cited papers.

Dear reviewer, your interpretation is correct, this table reports the number of citations only from studies in our database, which are studies on biostimulants only. We have added the total citations in the table and changed the header of table 5.