A case of benign neglect

Academic papers

Observations

example, anthropologists have studied pastoralism since the early 1900s. Another interesting trend is the increase in integrated approaches since 2005 (where both pastoralism and rangelands were mentioned in the same publication). Based on the study’s system boundary, an in- depth analysis was carried out on a sample of 2,658 publications covering both pastoralism and rangelands, hereafter referred to as the sample. The number of hits found for different keywords within the sample gives an indication of what subjects are

The search for pastoralism and rangeland metonyms in Scopus identified only 96,414 records out of a possible 71 million records. There were 79,245 records for rangelands, 19,133 for pastoralism and 1,644 for agropastoralism. A total of 19,626 records included metonyms for pastoralism or agropastoralism, while only 2,658 publications covered both pastoralism and rangelands (see Figure 12). According to the Scopus search, the publications on pastoralism and rangelands have increased since 1980, with a substantial spike starting in 1995, though it is not clear howmuch of this is due to a lack of digital publications in the earlier years or a general increase in all academic literature (see Figure 13). For

Figure 12: Number of publications in Scopus addressing pastoralism and/or rangelands, published between 2000 and August 2018

Sheep on migration along the Conquense Drove Road, Spain. ILC Rangelands Initiative/flickr (CC BY-NC-SA)

25

8,000

Number of publications that include either pastoralism or rangelands or both (refer to scale on the right)

20

6,000

Number of publications that include a combination of pastoralism and rangelands are shown in blue (refer to scale on the left)

15

4,000

10

2,000

5

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010

2015

Herder boy in Garba Tulla, Kenya. ILRI/Fiona Flintan/flickr (CC BY-NC-SA)

Figure 13: Publications on pastoralism and rangelands in Scopus per year since 1980

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