Long‐term trends in books of terms related to forest pathology

Abstract

Scientometric and bibliometric methods are increasingly applied to study temporal trends in scientific outputs, but there has been little application in plant and forest health. This research note uses the Google Books N‐Grams search engine to explore temporal trends in the use of terms related to forest pathology in published books. The search was performed for books in American and British English, French, German and Italian. There is evidence for a relative decline in the use of the term ‘forest pathology’, since the 1950s in books in American English and since the 1990s in books in British English. This decline was counterbalanced by a relative increase in the use of the term ‘forest health’ between the 1980s and the end of the 1990s, whereas the term ‘tree diseases’ roughly followed the same trend as ‘forest pathology’. A declining trend was observed for ‘pathologie forestière’ (since the 1980s), both ‘Waldschutz’ and ‘Forstschutz’ (since the 1990s), as well as ‘patologia forestale’ (since the 1950s). The use of the terms ‘dendrology’, ‘forest entomology’, ‘forest genetics’, ‘mycology’, ‘plant pathology’ appears to have followed the trend observed for ‘forest pathology’ in all studied languages. Conversely, there has been an increase in books mentioning topics such as ‘ecosystem health’ and ‘old‐growth forests.’ The trends observed here call for increased efforts to make the public aware of trees, their diseases and the health of forests.

Scientometrics of Forest Health and Tree Diseases: An Overview

“…A similar method can be used to study bibliometric patterns. For example, the proportion of published books mentioning "forest pathology" appears to have declined in recent decades for books in American and British English, French, German and Italian [108]. This finding is of concern, given the importance of books in inspiring students to study a certain topic, although this influence of books on career and lifestyle choices might now have been largely replaced by the internet and social media [109].…”

“…This finding is of concern, given the importance of books in inspiring students to study a certain topic, although this influence of books on career and lifestyle choices might now have been largely replaced by the internet and social media [109]. There has partly been a counter-trend for books mentioning "forest health" in the same languages [108]. The absolute number of published papers per year is increasing for most scientific topics, including various tree fungal pathogens (although not all of them).…”

A Review of 'Crop Protection in Medieval Agriculture. Studies in Pre-Modern Organic'

“…[9][10][11]), including many historical studies of agriculturally (and environmentally) related topics (e.g. [12][13][14][15][16][17][18]; iv) there are however few incentives for scientists to write books rather than papers (or emails) [19]; and v) most scientific books are so expensive that few students and citizens can actually afford to buy them [20,21]; Zadoks reminds us that crafting an affordable e-book, looking at historical times, can be enlightening in many ways.…”