Topics related to social sciences by authors from Slovenia in agriculture-and-life-sciences database CAB Abstracts

Documents related to social sciences are processed/indexed by several field-specific (e.g. Sociological Abstracts) and general (Web of Science, Scopus) bibliographic databases. These topics are scattered also among other specialized databases and information systems in agriculture, biomedicine, and other life-sciences, for example Agris, Agricola, FSTA, Medline (PubMed), etc. Agriculture can also involve social issues such as rural sociology, public services, settlements, demography, tourism (agritourism). Relevant documents may thus elude attention of researchers which seek information in a limited number of databases. We used CAB Abstracts (CABI/CAB International), the leading global database for agriculture, environment, veterinary sciences, applied economics, food science and nutrition. In a bibliometric/scientometric analysis, we used the classification based on subject categories CABICODES (CC), which enable identification of general research subject areas, in order to assess publishing patterns by researchers from Slovenia in 1991-2010. We assessed growth, and identified database records which had been classified with the social-sciences-related CC. We assessed co-classification or co-occurrence of these categories with other general subjects, such as Economics, Plant Science and Protection, Food Science and Produce, Animal Science, Forestry and Wood, Pathogen, Pest, Parasite and Weed Management, Soil Science, Human Health and Nutrition, Education, Extension, Information, Training, Natural Resources. 336 records were published by Slovenian authors, and classified with social sciences CC in CAB Abstracts. In total, 1313 different CC had been assigned to the records. The social-sciences-related research co-occurs with the following subject matter, in a decreasing order: economics, forestry/wood science, natural resources (e.g. water, meteorology, pollution), human biology/health/nutrition, food, plant, animal science/protection.