Research on the Brazilian Atlantic Forest (1989-2021): bibliometric and scientometric analysis

Introduction: this study characterizes the results of research on the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, indexed in the databases of the Web of Science platform. It seeks to contribute to the formulation of strategic actions for the biome conservation, identifying publication gaps and trends. From a bibliometric and scientometric perspective, this study caracterizes the body of scientiﬁc articles on the biome during the 1989-2021 period. Methods: the methodological procedures involved the following steps: 1) Information Retrieval at the Web of Science databases; 2) Dataprocessing,makinguseoftextminingroutines,whichimplieddatacleaning,crossings,andelaborationofmatrices;3)Datarepresentation, using Microsoft Excel R (cid:13) and Gephi tools. Results: the growth of scholarly communication on the Brazilian Atlantic Forest seems to be related to several historical and political factors that took place along 1989-2021. Inter-institutional relations occur mainly in the State of São Paulo, and a greater productivity and collaboration between researchers and institutions is observed in the Southeast Region of Brazil. Main research subjects are related to taxonomy, systematics, conservation and endemism. Recent themes have emerged over the last decade, such as ecosystemrestoration,changesinlanduseandecosystemservices. Conclusions: publicationmetricsonthedomaincancontributetoprospect research partnerships and collaborations between researchers and institutions, and serve as a source of information for identifying niches of competence about the biome. A more focused understanding on the addressed topics can indirectly support technical and managerial areas for actions aimed at conservation and restoration of the biome.


INTRODUCTION
The Atlantic Forest, a biome considered as "National Heritage" in the Brazilian Federal Constitution of 1988, has been impacted by deforestation and forest fragmentation, during five centuries of occupation and use of its resources.It is considered one of the most diverse and threatened biomes in the world (Baltazar & Gibertoni, 2009).As it consists of a mosaic of heterogeneous and complex vegetation, created by different climatic, geomorphological and edaphic conditions, it presents one of the most diverse biota on the planet make articles accessible in an integrated way.This context, reinforced by peer review, funding agencies' quality criteria and database indexing guidelines, consolidates a rigorous system that establishes relevance and impact parameters to classify journals, even influencing the distribution of resources for researchers and research groups, according to their performance within this system.Thus, publication in journals is almost imperative and, given the complexity of obtaining acceptance of articles in the best classified vehicles, scientific collaboration is important, as it can impact on productivity, visibility and reach of scholarly communication (Glänzel, 2002;Lee & Bozeman, 2005;Persson, Glänzel, & Danell, 2004;Rosas & Grácio, 2014).

MATERIALS AND METHODS
This study uses techniques for retrieving information from databases, and bibliometrics and scientometrics methods to generate productivity and relational indicators on the field of scientific research on the Brazilian Atlantic Forest.In the following, the methodological procedures are presented according to the execution steps.

Data search and recovery strategy
The WoS (Clarivate Analytics) was used to identify and retrieve the literature on the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, as it is a well-known platform that provides access to several multidisciplinary databases, covering a significant part of renowned journals in the studied area.Searches were carried out in the Title, Abstract and Keyword fields of the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Arts & Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) and Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) databases, using the following search strategy: ("Atlantic Rain Forest" OR "Atlantic Forest" OR "Atlantic Tropical Forest").Retrieved articles and review articles included at least one author from a brazilian institution and were published during the period of 1989-2021.Data collection was performed on August 22, 2022.Records were exported in .txtformat.Access to the platform was carried out through the Capes Journal Portal.

Data processing and representation
The set of records was made readable through a filter available in the VantagePoint R software.Clean up text mining routines were performed to clean and standardize data and, subsequently, cross variables, enabling the interweaving of fields for multivariate analysis, as well as the elaboration of representative matrices of co-occurrence networks.
The lists and matrices generated in VantagePoint R were imported into Microsoft Excel R for better formatting of tables and graphs.The Gephi software (v.010) was used to analyze the set of relationships established between institutions and keywords, maximizing the perception of relationships between the observed variables.

Complementary data sources
Information from the Lattes Platform of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) was also used to identify and contextualize the trajectory of those researchers who stood out in the scientific production on the Atlantic Forest and their scientific bibliographies.Regarding the journals in which articles are published, indicators from the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) made available by the Clarivate Analytics Platform were consulted.

Generated Indicators
The profile and development of research on the Brazilian Atlantic Forest were presented and analyzed using the following indicators: annual distribution of publications; distribution of publications by research area; subject co-occurrence networks based on the keywords of the articles; leading scientific journals and research institutions; institutional network of co-authorship and highly productive researchers.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The data collection identified 8.891 publications (articles and review articles) on the Brazilian Atlantic Forest by authors from Brazilian institutions, published in journals indexed in WoS databases during the period of 1989-2021.
Figure 1 presents the diachronic evolution of publications and allows identifying three periods: 1989-1996, characterized by an incipient production (n = 49; 0.5% of the total), and less than 20 articles per year (x = 6.1); 1997-2006, period that marks the beginning of the growth of production on this subject in Brazil (n = 307; 3.4% of the total) with more than 20 articles per year (x = 43.9);2007-2021, showing a sustained and significant growth in research outcomes on the Brazilian Atlantic Forest (n=8,635; 96.0%), with more than 90 annual publications (x = 43.9)= 479.7).However, the growth rates in the 32 years express distinct moments, even though, in continuous growth.It is observed that publications on the Atlantic Forest biome were not very expressive before the 2000s.The initial growth observed in the 1990s seems to be the result of several factors, including the ECO 92 World Conference, an event that Talamini, Schinaider, Schinaider, and Liberalesso (2017) consider a milestone that contributed to change the socio-environmental paradigm in Brazil.Although the conference is not characterized as an academic event, it was emblematic as a representation of a new world order that moved different segments of society, including academia.Hochstetler and Keck (2007) characterize three phases of environmental activism in the world.The beginning of the third environmentalist wave, according to Sedrez (2009, p. 230) was marked, in Brazil, by the Federal Constitution of 1988.According to the author, the period was characterized by the triple challenge of democratic restoration, economic crisis and exponential increase in contacts with international agencies and activists, in a movement that continues up to the present.It is suggested here that these changes in the political context may have influenced the interest of researchers in relation to the environmental theme, which was gaining ground in different parts of the world and, above all, may have influenced the research agenda in the environmental area in Brazil.
This line of thought is in accordance with the results presented by Silva et al. (2020) who analyzed the results of research on non-timber forest products in Brazil (considering the Atlantic Forest), and identified that the consolidation of the publications on the subject also began in the 1990s.Furthermore, recognition of the Atlantic Forest biome in Brazil was not very expressive before the 2000s.The first legal instruments for its protection, as well as the regulations for the explotation of its resources, began to be implemented during the period of 1989-2000, standing out the Federal Ordinances of IBAMA (218/1989and 438/1989), the Federal Decree No. 99,547/1990, Bill No. 3.285/1992, and Federal Decree No. 750/1993, as well as the recognition of the Atlantic Forest as national heritage in the environment chapter of the Federal Constitution of 1988 (Conselho Nacional da Reserva da Biosfera da Mata Atlântica, 1999).Moreover, the National Environmental Program (PNMA), created in 1991, was the first major investment by the Brazilian government in the environmental area, and allowed for the improvement of the institutional capacity of federal and state environmental agencies and the formulation of environmental policies (Moura, 2016).
In principle, the reduced number of articles published in the period indicate these normative measures, did not directly impact the results of the research on the Atlantic Forest.Likewise, it seems that several relevant events occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which culminated in social recognition of the Atlantic Forest biome in Brazil, also had no direct impact.One of them was the creation of Fundação SOS Mata Atlântica, in 1986, a non-governmental organization (NGO) with the mission of conserving the natural and historical heritage of the biome with a view to sustainable development for the preservation of flora and fauna (see https://www.sosma.org.br/).Another event was the recognition in 1991, by Unesco, of the Atlantic Forest as a Biosphere Reserve (RBMA, 2020).
Moreover, it should be noted that several scientific workshops took place in the 1990s and contributed to the creation of an important data collection on the Atlantic Forest.A case in point was the First "Atlantic Forest Science, Conservation and Policy Workshop" (Conselho Nacional da Reserva da Biosfera da Mata Atlântica, 1999) held in 1996, which brought together specialists from academic institutions, NGOs, state and federal environmental agencies and experient researchers, to discuss the "regulation of the legislation that provides for the protection and exploitation of the biome, involving the definition of its scope, in addition to proposing guidelines for a national policy on the entire Atlantic Forest region" (Conselho Nacional da Reserva da Biosfera da Mata Atlântica, 1999, p. 15).Ten years later, the Atlantic Forest Law was instituted (Lei n o 11.428, de 22 de dezembro de 2006, 2006).
The growth of publications during the period of 2000-2010 may have been influenced by what Gläser and Laudel (2016) call the indirect effects of policy priorities in research (Gläser & Laudel, 2016).During this period, government implemented policies to encourage funding for specific research areas, seeking to influence researchers and institutions that, in turn, responded strategically to these demands, creating and developing projects and research lines linked to government actions.Thus, in 2000, through Lei n o 9.985, de 18 de julho de 2000 (2000), the National System of Nature Conservation Units (SNUC) was created, which promoted a better organization of the Nature Conservation Units (UCs) and the protection instruments that already existed in other laws (Moura, 2016).In 2006, Lei n o 11.284, de 11 de março de 2006 (2006) was approved, which provides for the management of public forests and establishes the Brazilian Forestry Service (SFB), also creating the National Fund for Forestry Development (FNDF).In 2007, the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio) was created, an NGO linked to the Ministry of the Environment, responsible for the management and inspection of federal UCs, promotion and execution of research programs, as well as of other programs of protection, preservation and conservation of biodiversity (Moura, 2016).

Research Areas and subjects
The scientific periodical production on the biome was concentrated in 37 major areas of research (20 publications or more) out of a total of 85 areas.The classification considered the WoS scheme and was introduced in this research to reorder the corpus of analysis through a thesaurus in VantagePoint, which locates the ISSN of journals and replaces them with their corresponding research areas.Thus, it is worth mentioning that an article categorized into one area, can also be considered in another(s) (Figure 2).The most prominent areas (1,000 articles or more) are: Zoology; Environmental sciences & Ecology; Plant sciences and Biodiversity and Conservation, which together represent 79.1% (n = 7, 112) of the total number of articles (n = 8, 991).Studies related to research in Social Sciences and Humanities do not appear in this list because they do not reach a minimum of 20 publications, therefore, they were considered as quantitatively inexpressive for the analyses.
The emphasis on Zoology, Ecology, Botany and Biodiversity Conservation is in line with the predominant subjects identified by the keywords analysis; at the same time there were 600 keywords out of 2,471 that reached less than 10 occurrences.For the conformation of Figure 3 were chosen 31 keywords that had 75 occurrences or more and that were correlated ten times or more with other keywords.The most common term "atlantic forest", as well as some of its variations, were excluded from the network, to obtain a more accurate picture of the main subjects.It was observed that, despite achieving great quantitative representation, this term was generic, thus, adding little to the analysis.Two keywords, "taxonomy" and "neotropics", stood out with more than 500 occurrences, and were followed by "conservation", "biodiversity", "fragmentation", "biogeography", "Cerrado", among others.Taxonomy represents a field of biology that defines, classifies and names groups of biological organisms based on common characteristics.Therefore, the high number of occurrences of this term was expected, since the Atlantic Forest is one of the biomes with the richest biodiversity of flora and fauna species on the planet, and considered one of the 25 world biodiversity hotspots (Tabarelli, Pinto, Silva, Hirota, & Bedê, 2005).The term "neotropics" and other analogues (e.g., neotropical region, neotropical flora, neotropical forest) reflect a focus on terrestrial tropical and temperate Atlantic Forest ecoregions.On the other hand, such keywords as "biodiversity", "conservation", and "fragmentation", reflect researchers concern with the environmental health of the ecosystems that make up the biome and, consequently, with its importance for the quality of life of the population in its surroundings.
Other keywords such as "restoration ecology", "land use", "climate change" and "ecosystem services", although not included in the network, are among the first 60 keywords, having a minimum of 70 occurrences.The first appearances of these keywords date back to 2009 and research on these subjects have shown an important growth trend in the last decade, pointing to concerns about ecosystems sustainability and life on the planet.This trend may be related to Brazil's adherence to international agreements, defining commitments and targets aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, mitigating the effects of climate change and ecological restoration.In addition, the 2020s was named the Decade of Restoration for the United Nations (United Nation Environment Programme [UNEP]), a factor that also may also have stimulated research on the subject.Keywords, associated with such terms as deforestation, habitat loss and defaunation, showed between 50 and 70 occurrences, indicating important aspects to be addressed by ecological restoration activities.

Scientific journals
The identification and classification of the main vehicles used by researchers to communicate their works contribute to the comparison and representation of research outcomes on the Atlantic Forest, enabling researchers to better understand the dynamics of their own research field.Furthermore, these indicators can serve researchers as parameters to direct their research on this subject.
The 8,891 articles were published in 975 journals, and 203 of them (20.8%)represent 81.7% of the articles (n = 7, 346).This reveals that this corpus of articles presents a regularity that in bibliometric studies is expressed by Bradford's law (Bradford, 1934) and distinguishes journals that concentrate publications on a certain subject (seen as core), to the detriment of those that eventually publish on the topic (dispersal).
Additionally, 37 journals (3.8%) published 50 articles or more, with emphasis on 13 journals (with 100 articles or more) which concentrated 25.1% of the total number of papers (n = 2, 390).Table 1 presents the number of articles published in these 13 journals over the period of 1989-2021, as well as the percentage contribution of each of them to the total number of articles on the Atlantic Forest.It is noteworthy that these 13 journals were continuously included in the JCR for more than a decade, showing outstanding Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and being classified in Q1-Q4 Quartiles in different journal categories (Table 2).

Interinstitutional co-authorships
The 8,891 articles were published by authors associated with to 2,253 institutions, highlighting 20 Brazilian institutions with more than 270 publications.The leading countries by number of institutions include Brazil with 1,093 institutions (48.5%), the United States with 259 (11.5%), Germany with 85 (3.8%), the United Kingdom with 73 (3.8%), Argentina and Spain with 41 (1.8%), among others.
The list of institutions with the highest number of publications on the Atlantic Forest was related and compared with its position in the 2022-2023 ranking of the Times Higher Education (THE) (Table 3).This ranking classifies institutions around the world and in Latin America considering 13 performance criteria for five major areas: teaching, research, citation, internationalization, and impact on industry.In this paper, the research score was specified and ranked separately to compare the research productivity of institutions on the Brazilian Atlantic Forest.Brazil has 70 universities listed in this ranking.
This comparison sought to verify whether there is a relationship between the position in the institution's productivity ranking and the productivity in matters related to the Atlantic Forest, that is, whether the Brazilian Institutions that stood out in publications on the Atlantic Forest also stood out for being part of a group of renowned Latin American universities in relation to their research activities.a The Research Score corresponds to 30% of the score that makes up the general ranking of THE and is evaluated based on three criteria: research productivity, research into the university's reputation and the amount of funding the Institution receives.

Institution
Of the twenty most productive Brazilian institutions on the Atlantic Forest subject, ten are among the top 20 Latin American institutions in the 2022-2023 THE ranking, revealing that the prominence they achieved is consistent with their macro performance as reflected by their evaluation score in Latin America (Table 3).
It is observed that such institutions as the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), the Federal University of Espírito Santo (UFES) and the State University of Santa Cruz (UESC) (Table 3) appear among the 11 most productive, however, they do not appear among the best evaluated in the Research Score item by THE Ranking.It is also important to highlight that several internationally renowned Brazilian Institutions, such as the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) and the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden Research Institute (JBRJ), do not appear in the THE ranking because they are not universities, although they have graduate programs and a significant and qualified production related to the Atlantic Forest.
All mentioned institutions are public, mostly Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).Many are geographically concentrated on the brazilian atlantic coast, a fact that may influence the prioritization of research topics.The study by Lima, De Marco Junior, and Lima-Junior (2021) corroborates the possibility of an association between the region where the authors work and research on regions, biomes, basins, and deficits in knowledge about biodiversity.The cited authors noticed a bias in the distribution of publications, thus, researchers located along the brazilian coast were the ones most focused on the Atlantic Forest.
Figure 4 shows the co-authorship network of research institutions with papers on the Atlantic Forest.To generate the graph, only those institutions with at least 30 co-occurrences were represented.In addition, the co-occurrence network represents only those institutions with a minimum weight of 6 among the links, to form a network centered on the most representative authors.Abbasi, Altmann, and Hossain (2011), represents the sum of all the weights of the edges connected to a node, that is, the number of times two nodes are related.This index is influenced by the number of interactions between one actor and the other actors in the network; thus, in this case, it demonstrates the articulation capacity of institutions to produce collaborative research.
USP and Unesp prominence is also noticeable in Closeness Centrality (C), a metric that represents the proximity of a given node to others.In this case, the values range from zero to one, with the latter indicating the highest proximity centrality in the network.Values obtained by USP and Unesp (C=1), and UFRJ (C = 0.93), indicate the paths between these institutions and other actors are shorter than average, and demonstrate that, in addition to producing a high number of publications, they also collaborate with various institutions.Another important measure is the Betweenness Centrality, a measure that indicates those actors (nodes) that interconnect regions of the network, that is, those who act as bridges between different groups (clusters), serving as interlocutors between the most prominent nodes, and the distant ones.The following institutions stand out in this regard: USP, UFRJ, Unesp, Unicamp, UFPE, UFMG.
A direct relationship was observed in co-authorship between geographically close institutions, which can be explained by the study developed by Sidone, Haddad, and Mena-Chalco (2017), showing that geographical distance is decisive in the articulation of scientific collaboration networks in Brazil, since the increase of 100 km of distance between two researchers implies a reduction, on average, of 16% in the probability of collaboration.Thus, there is greater intensity in interactions between institutions in the same state, or even in the same region of the country.
However, the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS), stands out, highlighted in the blue cluster with DOI: 10.5380/atoz.v13.90507 AtoZ: novas práticas em informação e conhecimento, 13, 1-15, 2024 at least 30 co-occurrences, as it is located in the center-west of Brazil, a region that has a minimal portion of the Atlantic Forest biome.

Most representative authors according to the article productivity criterion
Regarding productivity, the ten most representative authors in the domain were specified in  (2020) found that 88% of the most productive researchers in a health area were CNPq research fellows too, with the vast majority belonging to the PQ modality; Martelli-Junior et al. ( 2010) also highlighted the importance of CNPq's research grants, as a mechanism to induce an increase in the publication of articles in high-impact journals.
The authors in Table 4 are mostly from institutions located in the southeastern region of Brazil, with emphasis on the USP (40%) and the Unesp (30%); only one author was from a university located in the northeast region (UFPE).In addition, researchers' training is predominantly focused on the field of Biological Sciences, followed by Agricultural Sciences, Health Sciences and Exact and Earth Sciences, according to the classification of knowledge areas by CNPq.

CONCLUSIONS
The publication metrics on the Brazilian Atlantic Forest contribute to prospecting partnerships and research collaborations between researchers and institutions that work with the subject and serve as a source of information for the identification of niches of competence, a necessary action for the strengthening of public and scientific policies aimed at the conservation and restoration of this biome.The generated indicators highlight some aspects of the research results published on the Atlantic Forest, and its relationship with the main legal and political events that occurred in Brazil and contributed to the social recognition of this biome.
Knowledge gaps to be filled in the literature were also identified, for example, the topics that emerged in the last decade, such as ecosystem restoration, changes in land use, and ecosystem services.A deeper understanding of these issues in new research can support technical and managerial areas for actions aimed at conservation and restoration.It should be noted that inter-institutional relations occur mainly in the State of São Paulo, as well as greater productivity and collaboration between researchers and institutions in the Southeast Region of Brazil.
Research on the biodiversity of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, as well as the balance between the conservation of it's natural resources and human development, must seek constant interaction between different scientific domains, as it is a geographic area that concentrates more than 70% of the Brazil's economy, while its conservation has social, environmental, political and economic importance, for the population that lives in its surrounding (around 145 million inhabitants).

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Distribution of articles on the Atlantic Forest in the WoS database by year (1989-2021).

Table 1 .
Journals with the highest number of publications

Table 2 .
Journals with the highest number of publications in the JCR., extinction and documentation of long-term changes, and ex situ conservation 3 .It has been classified in theJCR since 1997, achieving high JIF values (1.091-4.296)andbeing included in Q1-Q2 quartiles.Forest Ecology and Management, a journal published by Elsevier, reports research findings related to forest ecology and forest management, with a focus on the application of biological, ecological, and social knowledge to the management and conservation of plantations and natural forests 4 .The journal appears in the JCR since 1997, with JIF values ranging between 0.817-4.384,and framed in the Q1-Q2 quartiles until 2021.
In turn, Biodiversity and Conservation is a renowned international multidisciplinary journal published by Springer since 1992.It publishes comprehensive topics, considering aspects of biological diversity, its conservation, and sustainable use.Its subject covers rapid assessment approaches, such as estimating species numbers and diversity (by traditional, molecular, or proxy methods), habitat management, conservation policies and regulations, threats, biodiversity loss

Table 3 .
Comparison of institutional rankings: Research productivity on the Atlantic Forest in WoS x THE Ranking of the best universities in Latin America.

Table 4 .
Grácio, de Oliveira, et al. (2011)ional and research background were mapped, as well as the existence of CNPq's productivity research fellows on this list.It is observed that nine out of ten researchers (90%) have CNPqs fellowships -(PQ modality), six at level PQ 1A, two at PQ 1B and one at PQ 1C level.The results are similar to those found in other areas;Grácio, de Oliveira, et al. (2011)observed that 64% of the most productive researchers in an Information Science segment were CNPq research fellows;Sobral, Duarte, Santos, and Mello