Who’s talking to whom in agribusiness? And should anyone listen? The network of intellectual influence in agribusiness research

Abstract

Purpose

To develop an understanding of communication among agribusiness journals and to examine patterns of citations that allow the measurement and description of the structure of communication flows among those journals in a network.

Design/methodology/approach

The data for this study were gathered from the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) published by Thomson Scientific (Philadelphia). The authors conducted a bibliometric analysis, based on an international trade analogy to explain the network of agribusiness journals and how these journals communicate with business and economics journals.

Findings

Business and economics journals and, particularly the traditionally major ones, surprisingly were scarcely every used. However, the British Food Journal stood out with 50 citations to marketing and strategic management journals.

Research limitations/implications

There are predominantly four such limitations: only 33 journals were studied, only one 5-year time period was involved, that time period is a few years old and the journal characteristics were derived using data from the “Scopes” and “Information for Authors” text on the website of each journal.

Practical implications

Exchanges of agribusiness knowledge and information among diverse stakeholders (consumers, suppliers and public agencies) in a complex environment require a better understanding of the network of agribusiness journals and their relation to traditional business and economics journals.

Social implications

Networks of journals facilitate cooperation and interactions to improve developments in the field.

Originality/value

Examining citations from and to the field of agribusiness is interesting and important because knowledge is transferred through networks comprise those who contribute to journals, read them and learn from them, i.e. by “talking” to each other as well as by practitioners who also read and learn from those journals.

Citation

Van Fleet, D.D., McWilliams, A. and Freeman, M. (2022), "Who’s talking to whom in agribusiness? And should anyone listen? The network of intellectual influence in agribusiness research", British Food Journal, Vol. 124 No. 9, pp. 2877-2892. https://doi.org/10.1108/BFJ-06-2021-0640