Nanotechnology applications in food: A scientometric overview

Abstract

Both the food science and technology and nanoscience and nanotechnology have been a basic component of the scientific literature with over one million indexed papers each since 1980s. In the meantime, scientometrics has emerged as a new interdisciplinary scientific discipline since 1960s. This scientometric tool has been applied both to nanoscience and nanotechnology and to food science and technology. However, there has been no application of the scientometric tool to the nanotechnology applications in foods in general, although there have been two studies focusing on food nanopreservation and nanoemulsions used in the food industry. This study aims to apply the scientometric tool to the nanotechnology applications in foods in general to provide information for the stakeholders in the light of the new institutional theory, focusing on 53 citation classics forming the top 1% of the indexed papers published in this novel research field as a first-ever study for the food science and technology. The results show that the reviews were significantly over-represented in these classical papers. The most-prolific subjects were 'nanotechnology applications in food emulsions' and 'nanotechnology applications in food packaging' with 13 papers each. These 2 top subjects were followed by 'nanotechnology applications in encapsulation of foods', 'nanotechnology applications in food safety', and 'other nanotechnology applications in foods' with 7 papers each. Additionally, there were 6 papers in nanotechnology applications in foods in general. It is notable that these citation classics focused on the structure-processing-property relationships as in other scientific disciplines such as nanoscience and nanotechnology, food science and technology, and materials science and engineering. The most-prolific author was 'David Julian McClements' of University Massachusetts at Amherst of the USA with 6 papers, and there was a significant gender deficit among the authors. The USA was the most-prolific county publishing 19 papers, 36% of the sample whilst the University of Massachusetts at Amherst was the most-prolific institution with 7 papers. Only 20 citation classics (38%) declared any source of funding and 64 funding bodies.