Accepted Manuscript

¿What is the new about food packaging material? A bibliometric review during 1996–
2016

Adriana Rodríguez Rojas, Alexandra Arango Ospina, Patricia Rodríguez Vélez,

Ronald Arana Flãrez

PII: S0924-2244(18)30673-3
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tifs.2019.01.016
Reference: TIFS 2402

To appear in: Trends in Food Science & Technology

Received Date: 26 September 2018

Revised Date: 24 December 2018
Accepted Date: 18 January 2019

Please cite this article as: Rojas, A.R.?g., Ospina, A.A., V?lez, P.R.?g., Fl?rez, R.A., ¿What is the new
about Food Packaging Material? A bibliometric review during 1996-2016, Trends in Food Science &
Technology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tifs.2019.01.016.

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 ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT

Abstract

Background: The first contact that every customer has when buying a food is the
packaging, this is responsible for the handling, security, aesthetics and even advertising of
the product. Over the years, the food industry has always shown great interest in developing

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packaging with different materials, some toxic for humans and others not.
Scope and approach: This article presents a bibliometric review to identify during the last
20 years, what types of materials have been used to develop packaging for food for human

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consumption, also identifies who are the most focused researchers in this topic, which
countries are most interested in the field and how an entire academic social network has
been created to identify the future of food packaging.

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Key findings and conclusions: The results show that the future of food packaging materials
includes not only an advanced use of technology, but also a great concern for the care of
health and the environment.

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 ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT
¿What is the new about Food Packaging Material?
A bibliometric review during 1996-2016

Abstract

Background: The first contact that every customer has when buying a food is the packaging,
this is responsible for the handling, security, aesthetics and even advertising of the product.
Over the years, the food industry has always shown great interest in developing packaging

PT
with different materials, some toxic for humans and others not.
Scope and approach: This article presents a bibliometric review to identify during the last 20
years, what types of materials have been used to develop food packaging for human

RI
consumption, also identifies who are the most focused researchers in this topic, which
countries are most interested in the field and how an entire academic social network has been

SC
created to identify the future of food packaging.
Key findings and conclusions: The results show that the future of food packaging materials
includes not only an advanced use of technology, but also a great concern for the care of

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health and the environment. AN
Keywords: Food packaging materials, bibliometric analysis, social network analysis,
academic influence.
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1. Introduction

The behaviour of customers has evolved. For example, a few years ago they preferred the
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establishments, selected the products that met their needs there and proceeded to make the
purchase according to patterns that are generally based on the difference in prices and quality
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of the products or services. Currently, considering the increase of the commercial offer in
different formats, the way of choosing and buying products or services has changed (García-
Cali, Girón-Colina and Rodríguez-Rojas, 2017).
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One of the products that customers should choose and buy daily is food, as it is a basic and
indispensable product; it is much diversified by its genres, classes and especially by its
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quality (Wyrwa & Barska, 2017). In this context, understanding how to determine adequate
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food security, how nutritional intakes evolve over time and how they are influenced by global
dynamics are some of the questions that academics are trying to answer. In addition, a big
interest is devoted to changes in consumer preferences and expectations, as well as to the
analysis of food innovations and their impact on the global market, including the role of food
safety and packaging (Santeramo et al., 2018). However, the growing global human
population must be fed, and food production does not match the growth generated. This
mismatch has demonstrated the true essence of food preservation so that it reaches people on
a global scale (Hamad, Han, Kim and Rather, 2018). For this aspect, the choice of a
packaging that conserves and facilitates the commercialization of the product is required.
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According to experts, food packaging is used for several purposes: contain the products,
necessary information about a product, and, psychological impact on a potential customer
through appropriate presentation of a product, define the quantity that the consumer buys,
and, from a logistics view, this facilitate the transportation and storage of products, protect
the products from pollution, damage from the environment and theft (Marsh & Bugusu, 2007;
Lisińska-Kuśnierz & Ucherek M, 2004; Jerzyk, 2014) In addition, Cheruvu et.al (2008)
affirm that today’s world of global markets and stiff competition in every product, it becomes
necessary for companies to explore ways to improve their productivity in terms of

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maintaining safety, using sustainable materials in packaging, implementing flexible and
standardized technology, and adopting proven management principles. Thus, organizations
face new challenges every day as offering better services for customer satisfaction, becoming

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in a in a success factor that mix the best service and adopt quality criteria (García-Guiliany,
et.al. 2017).

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In order to respond such a challenge, both researchers and policy makers have paid
increasing attention on development Food Packaging Materials (FPM) that satisfy the current

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demands of food consumers (Hannon, Kerry, Cruz-Romero, Morris & Cummins, 2015;
Sirviö, Kolehmainen, Liimatainen, Niinimäki & Hormi, 2014; Vanderroost, Ragaert,
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Devlieghere & De Meulenaer, 2014).

First article on FPM was published in 1935 by Morgan; his research was focus on highly
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protective yellow transparent cellulose films developed and utilized for the field; years later,
technology and biology (Lavers & Pearce, 1946; Crompton, 1965; Schrenk & Marcus, 1985;
Nablo, 1991; Barakat, Griffiths & Harris, 2000 and Roy, Saha, Kitano & Saha, 2012),
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sustainability and ecological packaging materials (Licciardello, 2017; Peelman, et.al, 2013;
Mikkonen & Tenkanen, 2012), active food packaging (Ribeiro-Santos, et.al, 2017; Ghaani,
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Cozzolino, Castelli, & Farris, 2016; Vermeiren, Devlieghere, van Beest, de Kruijf &
Debevere, 1999; Siripatrawan & Vitchayakitti, 2016; Gómez-Estaca, López-de-Dicastillo,
Hernández-Muñoz, Catalá & Gavara, 2014), and nanoparticles (Prasad, Bhattacharyya &
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Nguyen, 2017; Hannon, et.al, 2015; Mihindukulasuriya & Lim, 2014; Bumbudsanpharoke &
Ko, 2015; De Azeredo, 2013; Cushen, Kerry, Morris, Cruz-Romero & Cummins, 2012;
Bradley, Castle & Chaudhry, 2011; Lagaron & Lopez-Rubio,2011; Rhim, J., Park, & Ha,
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2013, Silvestre, Duraccio & Cimmino, 2011), were included in the development of FPM.
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Although the above-mentioned documents have been instrumental in reviewing and

assimilating the existing literature, it is proposed that supplementary insight can be obtained
by conducting a statistical analysis method. With this, network analysis can be performed,
which helps in identifying the established and emerging areas of research and in identifying
the most influential scholars in the FPM field. Hence, the aim of this article is to identified
and quantified published literature on FPM during 1996-2016, and conducts a bibliometric
review, considering that this statistical method is used by the researchers to evaluate the
results, importance, and influence of authors, institutes, journals, etc., within a certain field
(Chiu and Ho, 2007). In addition, in order to present a good visualization effect and concise
expression, Social Network Analysis (SNA) is employed.
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Regard to FPM field, there are 1748 documents type published, include articles, review
and conference paper, however, none of them was based on bibliometric analysis, resulting in
a lack of comprehensive capture on related research achievements in this field. In order to fill
such a research gap, this paper aims to investigate the performance of FPM researches
published from 1996 to 2016. In addition, research trends, topics and leading papers in this
area would be identified through statistical and citation analysis on the related publications.

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The paper is organized as follow: after this introduction, Section 2 describes the research
methodology and data statistics. In Section 3 are presented the research results; Social
Network Analysis results are presented in Section 4. Finally, conclusions and

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recommendations are drawn in Section 5.

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2. Research methodology and data statistics

2.1 Bibliometric method

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Bibliometric analysis is becoming a fundamental methodology for analysing research, and
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it originated from the field of library and information science. In the literature, there are
several papers providing complete bibliometric overviews in many research areas (Zhong et
al., 2016; Gao et al., 2016; Chen et al., 2017; Merigó & Yang, 2017; Mishra et al., 2017;
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Soosaraei, Khasseh, Fakhar & Hezarjaribi, 2018; Stelzer et al., 2015). This method is a
research field that is receiving increasing attention by the scientific community, and it is
especially motivated by the fast development of computers and the internet (Bar-Ilan, 2008).
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Different author defined the bibliometric concept. In 1987, Broadus, quoted by Koseoglu,
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Rahimi, Okumus & Liu (2016) it defines as a “quantitative study of physical published units,
or of bibliographic units, or of the surrogates for either”, others authors considered the
bibliometric method a tool that help to analyse, organize, classify and quantify the evaluation
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of publication patterns of all macro and micro communication along with their authorships by
mathematical and statistical calculus, based on intellectual, social, and conceptual structure,
and including g themes sought, methods employed, and samples used (Sen Gupta, 1988; Ye,
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Song, & Li, 2012; Zupic & Cˇater, 2015; Zhang et al., 2015; Apriliyanti & Alon, 2017). The
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results from bibliometric analysis can help researchers to better select their potential research
fields, recognize future academic collaborators, and identify the appropriate institutes to
pursue their academic degrees or conduct joint research.

To the present study, impact factors (IF), quartile ranking and h-index referred from the
SCImago Journal and Country Rank 2017 are applied to evaluate the influence of journals. IF
is assessed by dividing the total citations of papers from a journal published in the preceding
two years cited in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) by the total amount of papers published
in that journal in the same previous period (Geng, et.al., 2017; Buela-Casal & Zych, 2012).
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Quartile rankings are derived for each journal in each of its subject categories according to
which quartile of the IF distribution the journal occupies for that subject category. According
to Pajić (2015), the use of quartiles has enabled more intuitive visualization of ranking
fluctuations, particularly when discussing the status of dropped and newly added journals. It
has also provided the way to smooth the effect of minor fluctuations and move the focus on
more intense shifts in ranks.Q1 denotes that journal belongs to the top 25% of a particular
journal list, Q2 indicates the upper middle position (25–50%), Q3 lower middle position (50–
75%), and Q4 denotes that journal belongs to the bottom quarter of the list.

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In regards to h-index, is another indicator for evaluating the research achievement of a
scholar considering both quality and quantity aspects (Hirsch, 2005; Alonso, Cabrerizo,

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Herrera-Viedma, Herrera, 2009). Hirsch (2010), implies that the total articles published by
one person are cited at least h times. In addition, when the aforementioned items have a high

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score, usually reflects that a journal has a high quality.

To this paper will be extract basic information of each searched article, that include the

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publication trends (top 20 most productive journals, academic discipline, language of
publication and keywords) and authors information (key authors in FPM, top 20 most
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productive countries and key institution). In this way, it facilitates the detailed analysis of the
key features of the related research results. After conducting the bibliometric analysis, will
present the Social Network Analysis (SNA) in the field of FPM.
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2.2. Social Network Analysis (SNA)

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SNA is a quantitative approach for evaluating the relationship among the social actors
(Hou et al., 2015), is applied to investigate the academic collaboration of the most productive
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authors and that of the most productive countries/territories. According to Stanton, Walker &
Sorensen (2012), Social network models emphasise both (a) functional entities (roles) and (b)
the way in which entities are connected. Connections between roles can be defined according
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to chosen parameters.

Newman (2001) defines the SNA as “groups, which could reflect the centrality of the
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actors and the intensity strength of relationships among them from a statistical perspective”.
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In this study, was used the SNA to evaluate academic collaboration among different countries
and authors. In order to achieve this, information was first collected on country information
of each author in each article was extracted by using the database of Scopus, so the
visualization effect of academic cooperation among different countries can be presented.

To visualize the SNA information, the graphics of the Gephi software version 0.9.2 tool,
were used. This software provides easy and broad access to network data and assist in
specializing, filtering, navigating, manipulating and clustering of data (Bastian, Heymann &
Jacomy, 2009). As per Mishra et al., (2016), for visualization and mapping in Gephi, it is
necessary to generate a dataset which includes published papers and their citations.
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2.3. Data collection

To the present article, the literature dataset was collected from Scopus and WoS databases,
considering that both provide relevant information as year, subject area, document type,
journal, keyword, affiliation, country, source type and language; all this information was
selected to search publications of this paper. “Food packaging material” was chosen as the
keyword in title and abstract to search the papers published during 1996-2016. Table 1
presents the research formula in detail (Li, Porter &Wang, 2017).

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Table 1.
Search formula.

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Search formula Timespan and Database Type Results
TS="Food Packaging Timespan: Article (256) 1748
Material*" 1996 to 2016 Review (69)

Refined by: DOCUMENT
TYPES (article and review)
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Conference paper (65)
Index in: Conference review (56)
SCI-EXPANDED Book chapter (199)
Book reviews (45)

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Content in: Database: Note (28)
Title+Key words SCOPUS, WoS Encyclopedia (27)
Editorial (23)
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Exclusion criteria: Article in press (12)
Kinetics and migration, mass Erratum (15)
spectrometry, regulation, gas Others (953)
chromatography and γ-
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irradiation key words.

After delimited all the information to the search formula, were found a total of 1748
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publications, including article, review, conference paper, book chapter, note, letter, editorial,
short survey, book, conference review, article in press, erratum and others publication in
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different language. For the present study, only article and review were considered. Regarding
to source type, only journal was considered, with a total of 327 documents to analysis.
2.4. Comparative database
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To provide a bigger picture, a comparison is made between the two databases consulted. It
is important to note that it was only compared from 2008 to 2016, because the WoS database
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only has information since 2008. Using the Gluck (1990) and Bearman & Kunberger (1977)
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formulas, we calculated the % of overlap between two databases (TO) and the overlap or %
of coverage of a database A, in relation to another, B.

First formula is expressed below

∩
% = 100 ∗
∪

The result is interpreted as the level of similarity between the two databases, the greater
the TO, the greater the similarity. That is, a coefficient of 0.4 indicates 40% of similarity or a
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difference of 60%, meaning that when searching only one of the two databases, in this study,
we would find 60% of unique sources.

Second formula is expressed as:

∩
% = 100 ∗

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∩
% = 100 ∗

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In this aspect, the result is interpreted as the percentage that base A covers base B. Next
section presents the results of the study.

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3. Results

3.1. Publication trends

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Fig. 1 shows the publication trend related to FPM. Results show that, the number of
annual publications had not a gradually increased during 1996-2016. Darker bars indicate that
in those years there was a decrease in the number of publications. In this respect, 1998, 2001,
2003, 2007, 2008, 2012 and 2015 present a decrease in publications in the field, meanwhile,
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2016 was the largest publication record on FPM (62 documents published). On a yearly basis,
during the last 20 years, the trend is between 2% and 4%, but in the last three years’ growth
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has risen to 9% and 10%, respectively. This means that FPM field is growing in the number
of investigations.
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70
60
50
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40
30
20
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10
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TP Research article Review article 2 per. Mov. Avg. (TP)

Fig. 1. Publication trends per year in food packaging.

Regarding to the document type, there is a growing trend in publications of both types;
264 correspond to research articles and 63 to review articles. 1998, 2001 and 2003, only
published three and four articles respectively in the field of FPM. Conversely, 2006, 2009,
2011, and 2013-2016 had published more than six articles. Relative to review article, 1997,
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2001, and 2003 do not have any published document. On the other hands, 2013 and 2016
show an exceeded number of documents published. Most cited article is “An overview of
polylactides as packaging materials” (Auras, Harte & Selke, 2004) with 1606 cites; follow by
“Applications of nanotechnology in food packaging and food safety: Barrier materials,
antimicrobials and sensors” (Duncan, 2011) and “Applications and implications of
nanotechnologies for the food sector” (Chaudhry et.al, 2008). In regard to review article,
“Review of antimicrobial food packaging” (Appendini and Hotchkiss, 2002) is the most cited
with 800 cites.

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3.1.1. Correlation between WoS and SCOPUS.

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After searching for articles and reviews related to FPM, 52 articles selected in WoS and 216
in Scopus make up the input data for the comparative bibliometric study between 2008-2016.

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It is important to note that Scopus database was the first to incorporate the concept of FPM
that is the reason why contains the most records. Uneven growth of Scopus, shown especially
in recent years, is due to having a larger number of indexed journals. However, there is not a

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strong correlation between databases WoS and Scopus in relation to the number of articles
that both bases incorporated annually despite the greater number of magazines that includes
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Scopus.

According to the overlap, in WoS, 19 journals and 51 articles were identified, compared to 72
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and 216 respectively of Scopus. The two analyzed databases provided 267 different articles
published in 91 journals. Of these, 247 (93%) are unique documents, collected in only one of
the databases, and 20 (7%) are overlapping or shared by both. The % of TO of sources
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between WoS and Scopus in relation to journals was 10%:

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8
% = 100 ∗ => % = 10%
19 + 72 − 8
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This result shows that between WoS and Scopus there is a 10% similarity, or 90% separation
in relation to primary journal that publish research in the FPM field. In relation to articles, the
% of TO was 8%.
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To measure the percentage of coverage of WoS in relation to SCOPUS and vice versa, was
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use the relative overlap:

8
% = 100 ∗ = 73%
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The result show that Scopus database covers 73% of the sources of WoS on FPM field.
The differences between the overlap of journals and articles can be explained by the different
indexation policies followed by the databases. Although some journals are included in both
databases, all the documents may not be duplicated. The overlap data between WoS and
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Scopus is 8 shared journals (from a total of 19 in WoS and 80 Scopus) and 20 shared articles
(51 WoS and 216 Scopus).

3.1.1. Top 20 most productive journals in FPM.

A total of 91 journals have published documents of FPM during 1996-2016. Table 1 list
the top 20 most productive journals in such field. Trends in Food Science & Technology is
the dominate journal in such a field regarding total publications, with a high IF and h-index

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score; its most cited document is a review titled “Biodegradable polymers
for food packaging: a review” (Siracusa, Rocculi, Romani & Rosa, 2008) with 511 cites.
Second most productive journal is LWT - Food Science and Technology (16 documents),

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followed by Innovative Food Science & Emerging Technology (15).

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In relation to h-index analysis, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry is the journal
with the highest score (247), followed by Journal of Chromatography A and Food Chemistry
(204 respectively). Concerning to IF, Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition has the

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highest score; however it occupies the 18th place in the list; because this journal only have
three documents found that belong to the FPM field. Its most cited document is focuses
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in identifying what the type of edible films and coatings will used to conserve quality of food
products (Debeaufort, Quezada-Gallo & Voilley; 1998). Finally, regarding to quartile
ranking, 55,17% corresponding to Q1, 20,68% is Q2, 11,20% Q3, 8, 62% is Q4 and 4,31%
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there is not data. This result shows that there is a growing trend of publication in journals of
high quartile; as shown in Table 2, 17 of the 20 most productive journals in the FPM field are
Q1, only 3 of them belong to quartiles 2, 3 and 4 respectively.
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Table 2
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Top 20 most productive journals in FPM.

Journal names TPᵃ IFᵇ Qᶜ h-indexᵈ
Trends in Food Science & Technology 35 5,191 1 151
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LWT - Food Science and Technology 16 2,329 1 104

Innovative Food Science & Emerging Technologies 15 3,164 1 84
Journal of Food Engineering 14 3,236 1 142
Food Hydrocolloids 12 4,747 1 118
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Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 11 3,460 1 247

Meat Science 11 1,734 1 131
Packaging Technology and Science 11 1,931 2 40
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Food Control 9 3,496 1 94

Journal of Food Science 9 2,014 1 123
Food Chemistry 8 5,151 1 204
Food Research International 7 3,086 1 123
Carbohydrate Polymers 7 1,404 1 156
Food Additives and Contaminants 7 NDᵉ 4 86
Food Packaging and Shelf Life 6 3,14 1 14
Journal of Dairy Science 6 2,474 1 159
Italian Journal of Food Science 6 0,672 3 30
Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition 5 6,077 1 125
Journal of Chromatography A 3 3,981 1 204
Journal of Cleaner Production 3 5,138 1 132
ᵃ Total publication of the journal during 1996-2016.
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ᵇ Impact factor of the journal in 2015.
ᶜ Quartile based on SCImago report 2017.
ᵈ Rank of the journal´s h-index in the data set established by this paper.
ᵉND: No data.

3.1.2. Academic discipline

In line with Scopus, studies contributed to this research topic involved in 13 different
academic disciplines (Fig. 4). Agricultural and Biological Sciences is ranked as the No. 1

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FPM-related discipline, with the highest percentage (51%) followed by Materials Science
(11%) and Chemistry Engineering (9%). Publications involved in Computer science,

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Business, Management and Accounting fields, Energy, Physics and Astronomy field, and
Immunology and Microbiology discipline also contributed to the development of FPM
related studies, with 2% and 1% of the total studied publications.

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Biochemistry, Medicine, 10

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Genetics and Environmental
Molecular Biology, 15 Science, 8
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Engineering, 20

Chemistry, 25

Agricultural and
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Chemical Biological Sciences,

Engineering, 29 158

Materials Science, 35
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Fig. 4. Academic discipline.

3.1.3. Language publication

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SCOPUS database shows that the authors who research in FPM topic, have published
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in 5 different languages. Table 3 shows the total of documents (articles and reviews)
published according to the language.

Table 3
Language published documents.
Language Total documents
English 313
Portuguese 8
Italian 4
Spanish 1
Polish 1
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Results show that, most used language by authors, still is English, followed by Portuguese,
evidencing that there is an interest of Portuguese speaking countries (especially Brazil) for
publish results of their investigations in their native language. It is interesting to note that,
articles found in Portuguese, all come from Brazil it is also because these authors publish in
journals of their country, however, mostly of the documents found in the FPM field from
Brazil (24) are published in English.

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3.1.4. Keywords

When a search is made in any database, first are Title words (TW) and author keywords

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(AUKW). The analysis of the most cited TW and AUKW revealed some researching hot
topics and trends. Titles are the most visible and probably the most read part of publications,

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helping to readers to find the information they are looking for and, if well-chosen, it will
synthesize the information of the whole paper and will show the subject focus and emphasis
of the study. Consequently, its analysis allows inferences about the tendency of research

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priorities. Similarly, author keywords can help readers recognize key publication research
content because they are chosen to reflect the authors’ reasoning and to represent the main
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research emphasis of the work (Costa & Caldeira, 2018; Zeng & Chini, 2017; Boudry,
Baudouin & Mouriaux, 2018).
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Wei et al. (2015) affirm that to understand the focus areas of one subject in a particular
region or during a particular period, it is necessary to study keywords since they can provide
valuable information. In the other hands, Li (2018), suggests that there are two fields on
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keywords in publication database like Web of Science (WOS), which are known as Author
Keywords (AKs) and Keywords Plus (KP) terms, and they play important roles in
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bibliometrics; for the present study, only the TW and AUKW contained in the documents
found were considered, being a filter to define the papers that have studied the FPM.
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There are a total of 155 keywords used in the documents of FPM. To have a better view of
the most used keywords, the mains words “Food packaging” and “Packaging material” are
excluded, facilitating which approaches they are investigating.
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1996-2001
• Antimicrobial
packaging
• Biodegradable
packaging
• Shelf life
• Active packaging
• Edible coatings/films

2014-2016 2002-2007

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• Active Packaging • Antimicrobial
• Antimicrobial packaging
packaging • Active packaging
• Shelf life
AUKW • Edible coatings/films
• Nanotechnologies • Bioactive packaging

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• Antioxidant packaging • Shelf life

2008-2013

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• Active packaging
• Antimicrobial
packaging
• Biodegradable
packaging

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• Migration
• Nanotechnologies
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Fig. 5. Most used AUKW in FPM documents
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Results show (Fig.5) that, from 1996 to 2007, most used AUKW was “Antimicrobial
packaging”, denoting a concern, on behalf of the researchers, on issues of sanitation of the
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packaging that consumers will use, while from 2008 to 2016, “Active Packaging” was the
most used AUKW, this is due, in part, to the interest in developing packaging technology and
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functionality, options that allow the consumer, not only to conserve and transport a food, but
also to offer options for reusing the packaging.
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For the first five years, a huge interest for the protection of consumer health is reflected,
but at the same time, a conservation of the environment, this interest is maintained for the
second-five years period; in the third quinquennial, the use of technologies dedicated to the
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design and manipulation of matter at the level of atoms or molecules (nanotechnology),

begins to generate interest by researchers, which continues until the last five years.
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Therefore, during the last 20 years of development of FPM, the interest for researchers is
focused on the preservation, care and conservation of food, with the constant evolution of
state-of-the-art technologies that extend the life of the products without putting the health of
consumers at risk.

3.2. Authors information

A total of 831 authors were found, with an increasing number of them from 1996 to 2016.
The number of authors per article ranged from 1 to 16, with more than three authors per
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article in dominance (22,62%), followed by four (20,79%) and five (14,68%) authors. There
are two documents, one review and one article, with the most number of authors per
document (10 and 16 respectively). First, is the review titled “Nanomaterials for products and
application in agriculture, feed and food” (Peters et al., 2016), published in Trends in Food
Science & Technology journal; in this work, researches explored and reviewed the already
marketed and in-development applications of nanomaterial in the agri/feed/food sectors upon
the request of the European Food Safety Authority, concluding that, the majority of the
applications of nanomaterial identified concerned application in food as food additives and

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food contact materials, while much fewer applications seem to be developed for agriculture
and feed. Nano-encapsulates, silver, titanium dioxide and silica are the most often mentioned
nanomaterial in the literature.

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In regard to the article, “Development of prototypes of bioactive packaging materials

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based on immobilized bacteriophages for control of growth of bacterial pathogens in foods”
(Lone et al., 2016), published in International Journal of Food Microbiology, conducted a
research on the developed phage-based materials, demonstrating significant antimicrobial

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effect when is applied to the artificially contaminated foods, and can be used as prototypes
for developing bioactive antimicrobial packaging materials capable of enhancing the safety of
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fresh produce and RTE meat.

Mostly authors are published only one work between articles and review (61%), only 39%
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published more than one document in the field of FPM. The maximum of documents
published by author is 19 and corresponding to M. A de Nobile from, Universita degli Studi
di Foggia, Italy, whose most cited articles (93 cites) are “Active packaging by extrusion
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processing of recyclable and biodegradable polymers” published in Journal of Food

Engineering (Del Nobile et.al., 2009), followed by “Development of immobilized lysozyme
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based active film” (Conte, Buonocore, Sinigaglia, & Del Nobile, 2007) with 65 cites.

Second most productive author is Cristina Nerín (17) from Universidad de Zaragoza,
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Spain. Her most cited work is “Development of flexible antimicrobial films using essential
oils as active agents” (López, Sánchez, Batlle & Nerín, 2007), with 145; and third author is
Nathalie Gontard (16) from Universite de Montpellier, France. The publications of the
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authors showed a marked increasing trend from 1996 to 2016. Top 10 most productive
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authors are listed in Table 3.

Table 4
Top 10 most productive authors from 1996 to 2016
Author name Country Affiliation TP (%)ª h-index FA (%)ᵇ
Del Nobile, M.A. Italy Universita degli Studi di Foggia 19 39 6
Nerín, C. Spain Universidad de Zaragoza 17 38 2
Gontard, N. France Universite de Montpellier 16 36 0
Conte, A. Italy Universita degli Studi di Foggia 16 31 5
Soares, N.F.F. Brazil Universidade Federal de Viçosa 14 19 2
Lagaron, J.M. Spain IATA 11 45 1
Devlieghere, F. Belgium Universiteit Gent 9 46 2
Espitia, P.J.P. Colombia Universidad del Atlántico 9 8 6
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Kerry, J.P. UK University College Cork 9 47 1
López-Rubio, A. Spain IATA 9 30 2
ªTP: total publications.
ᵇFA: first author publications.

From h-index viewpoint, the publication amounts on FPM are not proportional to the
authors’ h-index score. This because studies related with FPM are very interdisciplinary and
require the involvement of researchers from different fields. In this aspect, Dr. Kerry is the
top author, indicating his better academic performance and more of his documents are widely

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recognized; this is evidenced, for example, in one of his most cited articles “Developments in
the active packaging of foods” (Kerry, O’Grady & Hogan, 2006) with 305 cites. Followed is
Dr. Devlieghere (46). Interesting, even though Dr. Del Nobile is the most productive author

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with the most publication, she has an average h-index (almost 40); this mean that, her
publications did not receive enough citation as authors like Drs. Kerry, Devlieghere or

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Lagarón.

Regard to First Author publication, only Dr. Espitia has a close relationship between the

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total of published works and FAP. Conversely, Dr. Gontard does not appear as FAP in any of
the 16 articles published in the field of study of the present investigation. This may be
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because the documents found are not a strong point of her line of research; however, she
participates with other researchers in contributing her works to the field of FPM.
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3.2.1. Countries’ performance

Fig. 6., shows the geographical origin of the most contributing authors. This item does not
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consider the total of documents and only show first 20 representative author’s origin. Bar
colour ident
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EP

150
160
# of Authors by origin

140
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120 99
100 78
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80 64
52
60 43
40 24 23 22 18 17 17
15 15 15 15 15 14 14 13
20
0
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Fig. 6. Countries’ performance.

A total of 46 countries have contributed in the field of FPM. As in the top 10 most
representative authors, Italy ranks first, accounting for 30,27% of 327 publications by
tracking authors’ addresses. Spain (21%) is the second most productive country. Other
productive countries include Brazil, USA and China. All these states are the main food
producing of the world, which reflects that the mentioned nations usually need packaging to
commercialize its manufactured foods.

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Comparing Fig. 6 with most productive author item, there is a relationship between both;
turning Italy into a leader in FPM research. The next section analyses the institutions that

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have contributed most to the field, with the results of that section, it will be possible to
compare if the leadership of Italy is maintained.

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3.2.2. Key institutions

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Results show that there are 266 institutions who have published in the FPM field. The top
20 institutions were listed (Table 5). Four of these institutions were located in Italy and
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Spain, respectively, three in Brazil, two in USA and one institution each was located in
Argentina, Netherlands, Colombia, Ireland, France, Belgium, and Sweden. Universita degli
Studi di Foggia ranked first with 19 of total publications, followed by Universite de
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Montpellier with 17 of total publications.

According to number of authors by institutions, Universita degli Studi di Foggia is the
number one in the list with a total of 29 researches, followed by Universidad de Zaragoza
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with 23 authors.
Italy still is the first in the ranks of this study, as in the previous listings, but in this item is
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followed by France and Spain. This statistical data can provide valuable information to
researchers who have interests in the field of FPM to choose the potential collaborators or
pursue their degrees within such a field.
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Table 5
Top 20 most productive organizations from 1996 to 2016
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Organization #Authors Country TPª

Universita degli Studi di Foggia 29 Italy 19
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Universite de Montpellier 15 France 17

Instituto de Agroquímica y Tecnología de los Alimentos (IATA) 15 Spain 17
Universidad de Zaragoza 23 Spain 16
Michigan State University 15 USA 14
Universidade Federal de Viçosa 21 Brazil 13
University College Cork 14 Ireland 11
Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche 9 Italy 10
Universita degli Studi di Milano 15 Italy 10
Universidad del Atlántico 1 Colombia 9
Universidad Santiago de Compostela 8 Spain 9
Universiteit Gent 9 Belgium 9
Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuaria 9 Brazil 8
USDA ARS Western Regional Research Center 7 USA 8
Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas 2 Argentina 7
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Karlstads universitet 4 Sweden 6
Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná 3 Brazil 6
ARTIBAL S.A 1 Spain 5
Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research TNO 7 Netherlands 5
Universita degli Studi di Udine 4 Italy 5
ªTP: Total publication from 1996-2016.
ᵇ Rank of the organization´s h-index in the data set established by this paper.

After identify all the components of the Bibliometric review, next, we present the analysis
of the social network (SNA) that includes the authors, institutions, and countries that have a

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strong collaboration in the topic of FPM.

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4. Social Network Analysis (SNA)

Fig. 7 shows the academic collaboration countries. The size of one circle stands for the

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total publication number of one country through international collaboration. The bigger the
circle, the more internationally active the country is. The width of the line between two
countries refers to the collaborative frequency. A thicker line corresponds to a closer

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relationship.
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Out of a total of 48 countries identified, only 37 have collaborated on research of FPM. As
shown in Fig. 7, without concordance with the most productive countries (Fig. 6), it is USA
the most active country in terms of international collaboration, with a total of 34 countries
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around the world in articles related to FPM; Brazil (5 articles), is the country with which has
had more collaboration, followed by Colombia and Italy, both with 4 articles, respectively. It
is interesting to note that this has collaborated with countries with which it does not share a
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border, in addition to the fact that in the first place there is a Portuguese-speaking country,
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followed by countries from Europe, Latin American and Asian country, this reaffirms that
international academic collaboration has no obstacles in terms of languages or borders.
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Second most collaborative country corresponds to Italy, with a total of 27; with a big
collaboration with Spain (a total of 10 articles). This country has a strong collaborative
relationship with European countries as Netherlands, Belgium, Finland and France, also has
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also collaborated with researchers from Colombia (1) and USA (4).
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U SC
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Fig. 7. Academic collaborative relationships most productive countries.
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With regard to internal collaboration, table 6 shows that Italy and Spain are countries with
a high local collaboration (a total of 26 works for each one, found among researchers from
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different institutions in the countries), followed by Brazil with 19 documents. In this context,
mostly of the countries in Latin America (a total of six countries that investigate in the field
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of FPM were found), do not collaborate locally with each other but have a high participation
of researchers from institutions of Spain, USA, France, Italy, among others. An example is
Colombia, with two researches in the field and a total of 10 documents since 2009; none of
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them has local collaboration, but they have a big participation with international institutions,
mostly from Brazil and USA; the same goes for Mexico and Peru. Other countries that do not
have local collaboration are Israel and Netherlands, but they have a strong collaboration with
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researches from Australia, USA, France, Italy and Belgium.

Table 6.
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Local collaboration in the field of FPM.

Country No. documents Country No. documents
Italy 26 Argentina 3
Spain 26 Malaysia 3
Brazil 19 Portugal 3
France 10 South Korea 3
USA 6 UK 3
Ireland 4 Sweden 2

In relation to the most collaborative institution (table 7), results show that Universite de
Montpellier (France) ranks first; its participation correspond to Fraunhofer Institute for
Process Engineering and Packaging IVV (Germany), with a total of 2 documents; followed
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by Michigan State University (USA) which has a strong participation with Gorgan University
of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources (Iran) and a total of 3 documents found. Both
institutions are characterized by their high participation at an international level than at a
local level.

Table 7.
Most collaborative institution in the field of FPM.
Institution Local International More collaborative Total

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Universite de 5 8 Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and 13
Montpellier (France) Packaging IVV (Germany) 2
Michigan State 2 11 Gorgan University of Agricultural Sciences and 13
University (USA) Natural Resources-Iran (3)

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Universidad Santiago 4 7 GAIKER Technological Centre (3) 11
de Compostela (Spain)
Consiglio Nazionale 6 4 Universita degli Studi di Foggia (4) 10
delle Ricerche (Italy)

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Universidad de 4 6 Maxxam Analytics (Canada) & Goglio S.p.A 10
Zaragoza (Spain) (Italy) 3

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About institutions origin, four are locate in Europe and one in America. Again and in
concordance with the most productive countries in the field of FPM, is Europe the continent
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who has a major interest in the topic.

Regarding to most collaborative author (Fig. 8), it was considered that the author had, at
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least, a collaborative participation in more than four documents. In this sense, Nerín, C
(Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain), with a total of 11 documents, is the most collaborative
author in the field, mostly of them, in local collaboration, only three documents correspond
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to international collaboration (with Rodriguez-Lafuente from Canada and Bosetti from Italy).
In this analysis, there are two special cases of authors, one is Del Nobile (same most
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productive author in the field of FPM), this author has 6 collaborative documents, but all of
them are local collaboration; second case correspond to Espitia, P.J.P. (Universidad del
Atlántico, Colombia), this author has 9 documents, all international collaboration, especially
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with Soares (9) and McHugh (6), creating a FPM net between Spitia-Soares-McHugh, but
including Avena-Bustillos (USA) too. This becoming the author as the most international
collaborative author in the FPM field, mostly with researchers from Brazil and USA.
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Fig. 8. SNA most collaborative author
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Fig show how micro-networks of researchers have been created without having a single
interconnected network between the authors exposed in the graph. Example: Nerín has not
worked with Del Nobile or Cruz; the explanation is based on research approaches or profiles,
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which do not coincide to carry out a joint work.

After identify the SNA in the field of FPM, next section present the conclusions and
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recommendations.
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6. Conclusions and recommendations.

Food Packaging Material is an important field due that is an aspect to contemplate when
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marketing a product, considering that packaging is not only to contain the products, but also
define the quantity that the consumer buys, protect the products from pollution, damage from
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the environment and theft and facilitate the transportation and storage of products. Many
studies have been conducted in different aspect of FPM. Consequently, it is critical to
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summarize the existing studies and identify the key research areas so that future research
directions can be recognized. Under such a circumstance, this paper employs bibliometric
analysis and the SNA methods to analyse the academic features of FPM papers indexed by
Scopus during 1996-2016, so that researchers in this field can better understand the existing
research findings and choose their own research topics.

Results show that scientific attentions on this area have gradually increased with seven
decreases and one big peak in 2016. Trends in Food Science & Technology, LWT - Food
Science and Technology, and Innovative Food Science & Emerging Technologies were the 3
most productive journals, and, Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Materials Science and
 ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT
Chemistry Engineering were the most popular subject categories. About the most used
language, English is leader, followed by Portuguese. With respect to most productive author
is Del Nobile from Universita degli Studi di Foggia (Italy).

According to keywords analysis, “Antimicrobial packaging” and “Active Packaging” were

the most used AUKW, this is due to both are themes that help to prevent future problems of
health and the environment, by getting food. Only two of the top 10 keywords do not begin
with the word "food", they are: Meat and Packaging. In relation to the database comparison,

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SCOPUS still holding the lead covers 73% of the sources of WoS on FPM field. It should be
considered that, the WoS database is almost recent.

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At the global scale, Italy is the leading country with the most publications, most
productive author, institution, and local cooperation, followed by Spain as the second most

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productive country, most productive author, most international cooperation, highest academic
influence, and most productive institution. We observed that while most of the cited works
were conducted either in Europe or North America, continents as Asia (China, Japan, South

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Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand) and South America (Brazil, Colombia, Chile,
Mexico, Peru and Argentina) have an increase participation in the field of FPM. On the other
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hand, the contribution from African and Middle East documents in the studied field, have a
minor participation.
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Though the study adopts rich techniques to undertake extensive review of the existing
literature, we also acknowledge some limitations of the current study. First, the reputation of
the journals plays a significant role in page rank analysis, and the reputation of journals often
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changes with time. Second, the analysis is based on the study that was conducted during late
2016 and early 2017, and hence the page rank analysis output reflects those articles which
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held importance at the time of analysis. Thus, argue that other methods may not carry similar
reputations but provide enough guidelines such as SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) that can
provide significant directions. In this regard, in the future suggest exhaustive analysis using
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these techniques to provide in-depth comparison among results obtained using each
technique.
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Regarding to SNA, most collaborative country is USA, has collaborated with 17 different
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countries around the world, however, most international collaborative institution and most
collaborative author are from other countries, first correspond to Universite de Montpellier
from France and second, correspond to Nerín from Spain.

About future trends on FP may focus on: (1) Nanoparticles, (2) Modified Atmosphere
Packaging-MAP; and (3) Active Packaging. Finally, we believe that this work might be of
interest to scholars who wish to carry out research in this field by working with different
researchers and at different universities.

Funding
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This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public,
commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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Highlights
Although there are literary reviews on the subject of food packaging, this is the first article
that makes a bibliometric study of the filed.
A bibliometric review allows to identify which are the opportunities to develop research in
the field, which countries are the potential ones and which are presenting a great

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opportunity to work with them.
Social Network Analyse is present, to identify all the academic collaboration around the
world in the field.

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Additionally, know what the trends are to investigate materials on food packaging for
human consumption.

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