An overview of Japanese turfgrass research for the past 50 years

Abstract The Japanese Society of Turfgrass Science (JSTS) has published the Journal of Japanese Society of Turfgrass Science for over 50 years. The objective of this research was to provide an overview of Japanese turfgrass research, including that conducted in universities and other research institutes and by prolific scientists, and to visualize co‐authorship networks among these researchers. Data related to the journal from 1972 to 2022, and the Researchmap database, which is the largest database of researchers in Japan, were retrieved. The 10 most prolific authors in the Journal of Japanese Society of Turfgrass Science over 50 years were selected. Lists of journal articles written by authors who had published four or more articles in the Journal of Japanese Society of Turfgrass Science were obtained from the Researchmap database, and 209 journal and proceeding titles were retrieved. A total of 750 authors and 771 articles were retrieved from the Citation Information by National Institute of Informatics (CiNii) Research database. In total, 89 authors published four or more, and 661 authors published three or fewer. Among these, the largest cluster was composed of 294 components. The logarithmic relationship between the rank and number of authors in the cluster suggested a power law relationship. According to the cluster analysis results, 131 authors were not connected to any larger clusters, indicating a lack of collaboration. Plant pathology was not connected to the largest cluster. The number of authors per paper peaked in 1992–2012. Tracking authors with many scientific publications may increase the efficiency of literature research.