A Bibliometric Analysis of Microalgae Research in the World, Europe, and the European Atlantic Area

A bibliographic database of scientific papers published by authors affiliated worldwide, especially focused in Europe and in the European Atlantic Area, and containing the keywords “microalga(e)” or “phytoplankton” was built. A corpus of 79,020 publications was obtained and analyzed using the Orbit Intellixir software to highlight the evolution of the research domain. Publication rates from 1960 to 2019, organization of the research, collaboration networks between countries and organizations, emerging and fading research concepts, major studied species, and associated concepts, as well as journals publishing microalgae research were considered. As a result, of the 79,020 papers published worldwide, 26,137 included authors from Europe (33% of world production) and 6989 from the European Atlantic Area (AA) (27% of European production, 9% of world production). The main worldwide scientific research topics found in this study were phytoplankton, community, bloom, diatoms, distribution, ecosystem, coastal, chlorophyll, zooplankton, photosynthesis, and primary production. At the European scale, the most studied topics were related to the environment, food, chemicals, pigments, protein, feed, and drugs. The highest scientific trends and market opportunities analysis identified bioplastics and biostimulants as top emerging concepts at the European level and agricultural, animal feed, and blue biotechnology at the European AA level.