Trends and hot spots of coastal science in Moroccan Atlantic coast: a bibliometric analysis

Despite the growing focus in coastal conservation practice toward scientific evidence-based decision-making, there remains a need for enhancing knowledge management and its implication in coastal management planning. In this review manuscript, bibliometric analysis in conjunction with network analysis is used to describe qualitatively and quantitatively the progress, trends and hot spots of coastal science in Moroccan Atlantic coast. In total, 4891 publications from 1971 to May 2021 were collected. The performance of publication covering annual outputs, document types, language of publication, mainstream journals, the impact of the research by research area, coastal habitat type and study area were investigated. Thereafter, co-word, co-authorship, co-country analysis and cluster analysis were conducted using VOSviewer software. The findings underscore a clear disparity in the research evolution. 52% of the total publications were produced between 2011 and 2021. 80% of them were published as journal articles. Journal of Materials and Environmental Science was the most active journal. Behind Morocco, France and Spain researchers have made the main contributions to this research area. 75% of publications have been limited to the coastlines and lagoons. In contrast, habitats such dayas and oasis have received little attention. Hydrobiology and ecology have being gradually deepened. The analysis also revealed a significant research bias against the south–central coastline, the regions of Moroccan Atlantic that have a high research need. This analysis suggests that future scientific effort on Moroccan Atlantic coastal ecosystems should relieve existing biases by increasing multidisciplinary integrated system research and encouraging inter-regional transfer of research resources to areas of low research effort, with a special emphasis on the critical research ecosystems in the southern coastline. Finally, some key recommendations were raised for strengthening the implementation of knowledge management within the concept of sustainable coastal management.