AGRICULTURE VS. SOCIAL SCIENCES: SUBJECT CLASSIFICATION AND SOCIOLOGICAL CONCEPTUALIZATION OF RURAL TOURISM IN SCOPUS AND WEB OF SCIENCE

Agriculture and consumptive function of countryside (rural areas) are connected which should be reflected in scientific research. In order to test relationships, we selected the topic of rural tourism (also agritourism, agrotourism, agricultural tourism) considering sociological conceptualization (social sciences, sociology) and methodological approaches of information sciences (bibliometrics, scientometrics) in describing fields of science or scientific disciplines. We ascertained scatter of information in citation databases (Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar). Functionalities were evaluated, affecting search precision and recall in information retrieval. We mapped documents to Scopus subject areas as well as Web of Science (WOS) research areas and subject categories, and related publications (journals). Databases do not differ substantially in mapping this topic. Social sciences (including economics or business) occupy by far the most important place. The strongest concentration was found in tourism-related journals (consistent with power laws). Agriculture-related publications are rare, accounting for some 10 % of documents. Interdisciplinarity seems to be weak. Results point to poor inclusion of emerging social topics in agricultural research whereby agriculture may lose out in possible venues of future research.