Analysis of academic influence of Journal of Fruit Science based on Web of Science

Abstract:【Objective】Journal of Fruit Science is an important national professional academic journal in fruit disciplines. In order to master the development trend of the journal in recent ten years, the academic value and development potential are comprehensively evaluated in terms of the articles published in the journal, which will provide reference for the internationalization and influence promotion of the journal.【Methods】Based on the Web of Science platform and using bibliometric methods, this paper makes a statistical analysis of the citation of papers published in Journal of Fruit Science from 2011 to 2020, including the number of papers cited by SCI, cumulative citation and highly cited papers of Journal of Fruit Science in the past ten years. This paper analyzes the annual distribution of the citing articles, the main citing journals, the main citing countries and regions, the main citing institutions, the citing article's main research direction and so on. Search condition settings are as follows: Search in: SCI database; Retrieval cited work: Journal of Fruit Science; Retrieval cited years: 2011—2020; Retrieval time: September 7, 2021.【Results】The search results show that 487 papers published in Journal of Fruit Science from 2011 to 2020 were cited by 683 papers from SCI, with a cumulative number of citing times of 816 and an average number of citing times of 1.68 for a single paper. There are 9 papers that were cited more than 6 times among the 487 cited papers, and these papers are all research papers. There are 189 papers that were cited between 2-5 times, and the other 289 papers were cited only once. The cumulative number of citations of Journal of Fruit Science has increased steadily in the past decade. Among the 683 citing articles, ten papers were cited more than 50 times, and the highest number of citations was 129. Nine of the ten papers were published in foreign journals, and among the 64 authors of the ten papers, 53 were Chinese, accounting for 83%. The disciplines of these papers include Agriculture, Horticulture, Plant Science, Soil Science, etc., which are highly related to the disciplines of papers published in Journal of Fruit Science. The audience of the journal is mainly researchers from Chinese universities and research institutions, and the journal has also attracted the attention of researchers from other countries, such as the United States, Canada, Pakistan, etc. Over the past decade, the number of citing papers of Journal of Fruit Science by newly published high-quality papers has continued to rise, and there is a large growth rate every 3-4 years. Papers from 41 countries and regions, including China, have cited articles from the Journal of Fruit Science. The number of citations from China is the largest, 642 times, accounting for 94%. Journal of Fruit Science was cited by 589 institutions, with a largest cited times of 76 by the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. The research directions of these citing papers belong to 74 subject categories respectively. They are concentrated in the fields of Botany, Horticulture, Agronomy, Food Science, Genetics and so on, but they are also distributed in other research fields, such as Energy and Fuel, Artificial Intelligence, Optical Components, Engineering, Electrical and Electronics, Material Science and many other disciplines. Almost 1/3 citing papers have been published in journals with international impact, such as Scientia Horticulturae published by Elsevier, Frontiers in Plant Science published by Frontiers Media S.A. The contribution rate of Chinese excellent authors to SCI is high. They are also readers of Journal of Fruit Science. However, most of their high-quality papers based on the literature of Journal of Fruit Science have been contributed to foreign academic journals.【Conclusion】Journal of Fruit Science has a high professional level, and has certain power of influence in Chinese mainland, its academic influence has maintained a trend of continuous enhancement, but the international impact needs to be further improved. It is suggested that the journal should base on the international vision, broaden its ideas, continue to support the traditional advantageous disciplines, and also pay attention to the cross-application research between horticulture and other disciplines, such as Electronic Information, Artificial Intelligence, Engineering Electrical, etc. The journal needs to pay close attention to the phenomenon that domestic high- quality authors and highquality papers might flow to foreign journals, strive to attract excellent authors and papers, explore a benign development path of mutual promotion between excellent papers and high- quality journals. The journal should explore the scientific development model, pay attention to the frontier of discipline development, track the research trends of high-level paper authors and their teams, and launch practical measures to attract high-quality academic papers, so as to improve the academic level of Journal of Fruit Science; It is suggested to increase the number of papers published online and give potential young scholars more opportunities, which will help to cultivate talents and accumulate a group of potential excellent authors. At the same time, it is recommended to improve the English interface of the official website, strengthen overseas publicity, change the traditional publishing mode and adopt other measures to improve the international influence from the journal.