Global Research Trends and Productivity on Honey (1900-2019)

Honey is a natural product with widespread nutritional and therapeutic potential for a long time. Despite expanding magnitude, sparse exploration of related research output is observed. This comprehensive bibliometric study evaluated the honey related literature (1900-2019) through a wide range of known metrics. Data were extracted from the Web of Science database, and the “R-Bibliometrix” package was used for analysis. The search yielded 18197 documents from 3391 sources and 160 countries led by the USA. Articles (77.7%) were the leading publication type. Six (6) authors showed ≥ 100 publications with Robinson GE (USA) as the most proli�c author. Sixteen (80%) of the 20 highly cited documents were published from 2002 to 2010 with the source 'Food Chemistry' as the major contributor. Nineteen (19) sources showed ≥ 100 publications led by the 'American Bee Journal'. Entomology, Food Science Technology, and Chemistry were the most common research areas. Findings showed rising numbers of documents though the majority published in recent decades. The USA contributed > 1/4th of global publications, while top 20 countries shared >80% with limited contributions from other regions. Diverse coverage from basics to therapeutic levels was found, yet more clinical studies are expected and recommended.

Honey is a marvelous product of nature with tremendous nutritional and widespread therapeutic applications [1].An increasing body of literature re ects growing evidence to clarify the multiple therapeutic bene ts of honey originating from diverse and distinct bioactive substances [2].Honey is the only natural sweetening product that can be stored for a prolonged period and consumed without any re ning or processing technique.It consists of more than 200 distinct substances, stems from both the plant and insect kingdom, and has been considered for a wide range of nutritional, biological, and clinical importance [3].The therapeutic range of honey encompasses local application to systemic usage.The most notable in this regard is the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases caused by bacteria, viruses, fungi, and ameliorating gastrointestinal disorders [4][5][6].Besides, its role in cancer prevention and as anti-cancer therapy is also expanding.Several recent studies have con rmed that honey can regulate oxidative stress and has anti-in ammatory, immunomodulatory, anti-proliferative, anti-metastatic, and pro-apoptotic properties [7][8][9].Moreover, honey prevents the oxidation of low-density lipoprotein and thus prevents the process of atherosclerosis [10].Honey also can prevent or modulate numerous diseases of respiratory, blood, and nervous system [11][12][13].Nearly all the Sacred Scriptures, such as the Holy Quran, the Holy Bible, and the Holy Torah, mention honey's therapeutic properties [14].The Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Assyrians, and the Chinese used honey for almost every wound and ailments of the gastrointestinal tract [15].The Greek doctor, Hippocrates, considered the restriction.To remove inconsistencies created by regular database renewals, all records and data were retrieved on th 27 November 2020, in a single day and incomplete data for the year 2020 (1090 documents) was not included for later analysis.All documents (total = 18197) were extracted in plain text les and detailed analysis was performed using "R-Bibliometrix" package [36] with numerous bibliometric matrices.Top contributors were explored for collaborative networks.Authors (AAM and MBH) did independent search and data extraction followed by scrutinization of leading contributors shared in the results section to avoid inconsistencies.
father of modern medicine, recommended honey for various diseases, including gastritis and wounds [16].This has been reported in numerous evidence-based conclusions with effective application of honey for burns and wound healing [17,18].Additionally, Jull et al., have shown that honey dressings are more effective in rst degree burns than conventional dressings [19].Although honey has been used in wound care and burns for millennia, however, it is now being integrated into modern medicine based on recent studies.Infectious diarrhea is one of the leading causes of mortality in children under ve years of age worldwide despite global success in its management for the past 30 years [20,21].Recent scienti c knowledge endorsed the effectiveness of honey in gut-associated disorder, including diarrhea [15].It has been shown that a combination of probiotics and prebiotics (synbiotic mixture) has been more useful in the treatment of diarrhea [22].Honey, in this context, offers multiple advantages because it contains prebiotics, probiotics, and zinc besides multiple synergistic antibacterial components [23][24][25][26].These bioactive compounds are supposed to operate synergistically, decrease expression of virulence factors, and have unique and broad-spectrum bacterial targets [26].Moreover, bacterial resistance against honey is unlikely honey as it can block bacterial communication (quorum sensing) [27].Notably, honey only targets pathogenic bacteria without disturbing the growth of normal ora of the gastrointestinal tract, if taken orally such as diarrheal diseases.The role of honey in different human ailments based on scienti c knowledge is expanding on each passing day [28,29].Despite a long history, its magnitude of usability, and growth potentials, there has been limited exploration of honey related research trends and performance analysis.Bibliometrics is a known scienti c entity used in various elds to evaluate research trends and performance [30][31][32].There has been no bibliometric analysis published scienti c output on honey to the best of authors' knowledge.The present study aims to identify and analyze research publications on honey to outline the major contributors in terms of authors, a liations, countries, and sources.

M E T H O D S
Among numerous available databases, Web of Science (WoS) was selected as it is largely known as an extensive and speci c foundation for systematic assessment [33] and considered suitable for evaluating the research output of different regions, organizations, and authors [34,35].This study used a wide range of bibliometric indicators to evaluate publications related to honey.All published documents relevant to the study scope were extracted and analyzed.Initially, the search strategy used for this study scope was TI= (Honey), with all publications with no time

R E S U L T S
The total number of documents indexed in WoS and focused on Honey were 18197 (Table 1) from 3391 sources and 160 countries with the USA, Germany, China, Canada, and Spain showing 27.6%, 4.6%, 4.3%, 4% & 3.7% respectively.Table 1 below shows the summary of major descriptive ndings.The annual growth rate was 5.75 %, and the total number of authors was 31490.The English language represented around 94.75%, followed by German (1.9%).Original articles were the leading document type ( 7 7. 7 % ) , fo l l owe d b y e d i to r i a l s ( 3 .6 % ) , l e t te r s / correspondence (3.3%), and reviews (2.6%).Around 26% were single-authored documents contributed by 2699 authors.The collaborative index was 2.14.PY -Publication year, FA -First author, CA -Corresponding author, AF -Articles Fractionalized, TC -Total citations Table 3 shows the top 10 countries with Corresponding authors.The leading 10 and 20 countries produced 62.6% & 80.6%, respectively.The USA was foremost followed by China, Brazil, Germany, and Spain (Table 3).Total citations per country trends showed relatively more citations from the USA, Spain, Germany, United Kingdom (UK), and Italy with > 10000 citations.233) and National Science Foundation (218).Entomology, Food Science Technology, and Chemistry were the leading WoS categories and research areas.Top 50 authors' network showed 6 clusters, as shared in Figure 2a and Figure 2b shows three eld plots for the top 20 most productive a liations, authors, and countries.Among countries, the USA, China, Malaysia, Australia, and Canada, displayed main contributions.University of Illinois, Bee Research Lab, and University Sains Malaysia were the major contributing a liations for these top authors and countries.Furthermore, the University of Sao Paulo showed relatively more authors other than leading authors.Seven (70%) of the top 10 highly cited documents were published from 2002 to 2010 and 'Food Chemistry' was the leading source (Table 4).Table 2 shows the 10 most proli c authors.In total, 29 authors showed ≥ 50 documents, while 6 had ≥ 100 publications, namely; Robinson GE, Rinderer TE, Mangum WA, Page RE, Oldroyd BP, and Evans JD.One author, Robinson GE had ≥ 10000 total citations (TC).Among top authors, 7 showed an H-index of ≥ 30.The number of documents relatively showed more rise over the last 2 decades (2000-2019), contributing around 67% of documents.Among countries, the USA contributed to > th 1/4 of global honey related publications, followed by China, Brazil, Germany, Spain, and Turkey.Leading countries were the major contributors of total documents.Similar trends were observed in terms of corresponding authors and total citations per country.Authors from the USA; Robinson GE, Rinderer TE, and Mangum WA were leading as prominent authors.All top authors had h-index of > 10 and total citations of > 500 except the author 'Mangum WA'.Perhaps the reason for low impact despite being among top authors might be due to his all publications from one source ' American Bee Journal' and mostly as single author and editorials.Among top authors, Sulaiman SA (Malaysia) and Chen YP (USA) were the only 2 authors with starting methods used to assign UMF containing honey have also been patented [49].Among sources, the ' American Bee Journal' was leading, followed by 'Journal of Apicultural Research' and 'Apidologie', and these top 3 journals collectively contributed around 20% of total documents.Interestingly, the 'Journal of Apicultural Research', 'Food Chemistry', and 'PLOS ONE' showed relatively growing contributions in the last two decades in contrast to the ' American Bee Journal' that showed a relative decline in numbers over the last 2 decades.Honey, Apis mellifera, Honeybee, Honey bees, and Varroa destructor were the most frequent keywords.Among 3 clusters found on word map, the Cluster 1 showed mainly themes of honeybee research related to the identi cation of pesticide residues in pollens, honey samples, and honeybees.The other two keywords were related to well-known in vitro assays; solidphase extraction and liquid chromatography are widely used for analyzing pesticide residues in honey, pollens, and honey bees.This area of research has immense health nd implications for both humans and honeybees.The 2 cluster showed other important themes of honey publications and was mainly related to honey's antioxidant potential and antibacterial activity.The term avonoid in the cluster represents another important theme.The antibacterial and antioxidant potential of honey mainly stems from avonoids contents in honey.Nevertheless, other factors contribute to the antioxidant and antibacterial activity of honey, including phenolics, organic acids, peptides, enzymes, methylglyoxal, hydrogen peroxide, and Maillard reaction products.However, the occurrence of avonoids term is more in the honey publication as compared to others.The cluster reveals that both antioxidant and antibacterial activity are linked to uni oral oral honey samples.Besides, the cluster also shows the correlation between variation in antibacterial activity and the antioxidant capability of honey samples.In this cluster also the association of antibacterial components in honey with botanical origin was highlighted.The 3rd cluster showed honey's role in preventing and treating human infections, particularly against multi-drugresistant organisms.This also re ects the important themes concerning honeybee behavior, evolution, gene expression, and honeybee colonies.The term Apidae and Hymenoptera represent the family of a honeybee.The keywords infection and resistance represent important emerging themes in honey research, which elaborate on honey's role in treating wound infections, particularly those infections where multi-drug resistant bacteria are involved.A wide range of research areas and WoS categories were found to be related to honey, that shows scienti c contributions from basics to therapeutic and interventional scopes.Entomology, Food Science publication year in the last 20 years (2000-2019) as compared to other top authors with earlier publications starts.Most of these documents were found to be single country publications with relatively more multi-country publications from Switzerland, Australia, and the UK, suggesting more needed collaborative research activities.Top authors were mainly from top countries and a liations, showing evidence of collaborative links among them.University of Illinois, Bee Research Lab, and University Sains Malaysia were the major contributing a liations for these top authors and countries.In addition, the University of Sao Paulo showed relatively more authors other than leading authors.In general, these ndings suggest research and publications mainly from resourceful settings dominated by the USA, Europe, and China.Notably, limited contributions from the less resourceful countries were found.Moreover, the variations in the presence and concentration of different bioactive components in kinds of honey collected from different geographical areas of the world also need to be considered [37].Variation has been observed in its color, aroma, avor, sugar composition, pH, avonoids, phenolic acid, level of antibacterial activity, and other properties [38].Numerous factors can potentially affect, like geographical areas, owering plants, storage conditions, age, processing procedure, the concentration of hydrogen peroxide, phenolic components, soil composition, climatic conditions, species of bees and others [39].It would be worthwhile to explore honey from different world regions because of the high diversity level in different honey samples.This exploration might contribute to many other venues for future honey research and provide an opportunity for researchers from low and middle-income countries.Manuka honey is the most widely researched honey.The reason for its popularity is the presence of a high level of the non-peroxide antibacterial compound in its certain samples, collected from speci c regions of New Zealand [40].According to phenol equivalence, Peter Molan and his team have standardized the non-peroxide antibacterial activity of Manuka honey and designated it as a Unique Manuka Factor (UMF) [41].The UMF-related work is among the top 20 widely cited documents and results in the inclusion of Manuka honey in mainstream medicine as a topical therapeutic agent for burns and infected wounds (Table 4).Since then, many research pieces have been carried out in different countries to nd a honey with high medicinal value regarding skin burns and infected wounds [42][43][44].As a result, several honey-impregnated dressings; Medihoney from Australia, Beri honey from Pakistan, Revamil honey from Netherland, Tualang honey from Malaysian were developed and are available for the treatment of burns, ulcers, and wounds [4,5,[45][46][47][48].The the major contributors led by the USA with > 1/4th of global honey related publications which was followed by China, Brazil, Germany, Spain, and Turkey.Diverse coverage of areas and scienti c contributions from basics to therapeutic levels were found, yet more clinical studies are expected and recommended.Most of the publications fo c u s e d o n p hys i co c h e m i c a l , p h a r m a co l o g i c a l , microbiological, and nutritional aspects of honey against infections, in ammation, malignancy, atherosclerosis, and oxidative stress.' American Bee Journal' was the leading source and the journal 'Food Chemistry' was found to be a prominent source of highly cited documents.

C O N C L U S O N S
The study revealed the rising numbers of honey research documents with time with major contributions in the last 20 years.The few leading and developed countries were Technology, and Chemistry were the most common research areas and WoS categories.Besides, Zoology, Multidisciplinar y Sciences, Nutrition Dietetics, Pharmacology-Pharmacy, and Medicine General Internal, were found to be on the relative rise in the last decade.This perhaps shows the trend of recently increased output from health dimensions of honey, supplemented by keywords trends evolution over the years, and suggests relatively more health-related terms in the last 2 decades.Possibly the complete understanding of its wide and diverse range of bioactive substances, interaction among its constituents, and their synergistic impact on human body cells and organs have led to recognize honey as a therapeutic agent more as compared to past [50].Initial research on honey was related to its composition that can be traced back to 1950 when its different constituents were started to be identi ed and quanti ed [51].Later, research focused on other identi cation markers of honey regarding its botanical and geographical origin, authenticity issue, and detailed analysis of its diverse and distinct bioactive substances, particularly antibacterial compounds.Investigating antibacterial compounds and their standardization by phenol equivalence led to creating a new term, Unique Manuka Factor (UMF).The UMF became the de facto test standard for medical honey and was used to assign the medically graded honey a UMF value to treat burns, wounds, and ulcers [41].This is the essence of the limited therapeutic application of honey so far.There is a need for more in-depth and widespread research regarding its role in gastrointestinal disorders, systemic infections, neoplastic disorders, and particularly those human diseases where modern medicine has a limited therapeutic role.In general, the top 30 recurring terms in the conceptual structure map are related to the antibacterial and antioxidants potential of honey, its constituents, its role in infectious diseases, honeybee behavior, division of labor among honeybees, gene expression, and the colonies of the honeybee.However, clinical trials evaluating honey's role in treating multiple human diseases are absent in these top recurring terms.Therefore, there is a need for more clinical studies regarding honey utilization in different diseases.Only one source, 'WoS,' was selected to be considered a limitation of this study.Additionally, the limitations in the database might have indirectly affected some data.Perhaps, exploring the topic in other databases is also recommended to be explored in future research.Besides, sparse relevant literature restricted the comparison with previous studies.
CA -Corresponding author, SCP: Single or Intra-country publication, MCP: Multiple or Inter-country publications, TC -Total citations Amongst funding sources, 5 organizations showed > 200 contributions; National Natural Science Foundation of China (298), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) (235), United States Department of Health Human Services (234), National Institutes of Health ( and mean total citations are shown year wise in Figure 1 since the rst document in 1903 with maximum documents in 2019 (1111).The last 20 years (2000-2019) provided 67% of all publications.

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: Publications and mean total citations

Figure 3a :Figure 3b :
Figure 3a: Year wise growth of 10 most productive sources

Table 1 :
Summary table