Effect of Research Impact on Emerging Camel Husbandry, Welfare and Social-Related Awareness

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Transactional agreements between applied research and regulatory agencies in animal welfare are scarce for minority species. In the present study, camel science upturn and its academic and societal impacts are bibliometrically traced across academic journals involving camel referring documents. The journal, author number, corresponding author origin, discipline and publication year may affect camel research outcomes. Despite camel-related research and its mean impact factor having noticeably increased over the past three decades due to growing social and economic interests in their breeding, parallel evolution of specific welfare laws is limited. Reliable guidance and mandatory standard policies for assessing reared-camel welfare research are identified as primary requirements within this emerging industry on a global scale. Research must play a pivotal role in the formulation of regulations, as the disconnection between science and law renders the efforts to ensure sustainable camel husbandry practices under the scope of welfare impractical. ABSTRACT: The lack of applied scientific research on camels, despite them being recognized as production animals, compels the reorganization of emerging camel breeding systems with the aim of achieving successful camel welfare management strategies all over the world. Relevant and properly-framed research widely impacts dissemination of scientific contents and drives public willingness to enhance ethically acceptable conditions for domestic animals. Consumer perception of this livestock industry will improve and high-quality products will be obtained. This paper draws on bibliometric indicators as promoting factors for camel-related research advances, tracing historical scientific publications indexed in ScienceDirect directory from 1880–2019. Camel as a species did not affect Journal Citation Reports (JCR) impact (p > 0.05) despite the journal, author number, corresponding author origin, discipline and publication year affecting it (p < 0.001). Countries with traditionally well-established camel farming are also responsible for the papers with the highest academic impact. However, camel research advances may have only locally and partially influenced welfare related laws, so intentional harming acts and basic needs neglect may persist in these species. A sustainable camel industry requires those involved in camel research to influence business stakeholders and animal welfare advocacies by highlighting the benefits of camel wellbeing promotion, co-innovation partnership establishment and urgent enhancement of policy reform.