Bibliometric Analysis of Integrated Pest Management Practices

Abstract

Integrated pest management (IPM) is a wide-ranging strategy that involves tactics for the structural control of pests and diseases, also known as integrated pest control (IPC). The prime aim of this study is to explore global scientific publications regarding integrated pest management and map the recent global trends in this innovative research domain, thereby providing future research directions based on dynamic observations. Bibliometric assessment is used in the research to provide a more detailed evaluation of the existing state of IPM, which will ultimately lead policymakers to develop novel measures to promote the efficient utilisation of the IPM measure. The study explores the Web of Science (WoS) core collection database covering published articles from 1993 to 2022, and we evaluated 1217 articles. The study employed the Biblioshiny app (V4.1, K-Synth, Naples, Italy), specially designed for the Bibliometrix R package, and a robust Java-based application, namely CiteSpace (V6.2.R3, Chaomei Chen, Philadelphia, PA, USA), to convert, process, visualise and evaluate the selected dataset. Moreover, we utilised another Java-based app VOSViewer (Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands), to provide a comprehensive visualisation. Based on citation analysis, we presented a list of the top 10 articles based on global citation count, the top 10 institutes, the top 10 journals, and the top 10 countries. By carefully evaluating the co-occurrence network, this study structurally represents the 9 clusters and the 20 prime keywords, which will be assisted the future researcher in understanding the key terms used by the prior research and the density criteria. The strategic coordinate mapping is utilised to evaluate the keywords’ inner relationship and provide strong themes of recent research progression of IPM by evaluating the centrality and density quadrant tactics. This technique has not been rehashed previously within the IPM domain. We identify gaps related to the formulation, implementation, and assessment of the IPM mechanisms and propose avenues for future studies to fill those gaps.

1. Introduction

Effective management of pests throughout the farmland and agriculture premises has been thecentre of attention to farmers, researchers, and the government for facilitating sound agriculture production and rural development [1,2]. The practice of IPM involves adopting ecosystem-based approaches to crop production and protection [3,4] as it combines diverse management strategies and techniques to promote healthy crop growth while reducing the need for pesticides [5]. This approach aims to minimise the environmental impact of agriculture while ensuring sustainable and efficient food production [6,7]. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) stimulates IPM as a recommended crop protection initiative and appraises its ability to maintain environmentally friendly agricultural production intensifying and minimising the hazardous circumstances caused by synthetic pesticides [8,9,10]. According to FAO, integrated pest management (IPM) denotes exploring all alternative crop protection approaches profoundly. It ensures the integrated mechanism of suitable tactics that eventually prevent the severity of pest attacks, maintain efficient use of pesticides and other interventions within the economically reasonable level, and foster minimal human health and ecological hazards [11,12].

However, the primary focus of IPM is to promote the growth of healthy crops with minimal disruption to the agroecosystems, and the approach emphasises the use of natural pest control mechanisms [13,14]. The goal is to reduce pesticide reliance and encourage sustainable and environmentally friendly agricultural practices [15,16]. According to Kogan [17], during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with a lack of apparent and practical pesticides, crop management experts depended on understanding pest biology and cultural practices to deliver multi-dimensional management approaches. These are considered predecessors of advanced IPM frameworks. By the early 1970s, all pests’ domains were incorporated, which quantify as a new era of IPM [18,19,20]. The core basis of IPM is natural control, actively observing pests and diseases, and applying the economic threshold values and critical intensity level to take action [21,22].

Moreover, IPM is not contingent on one particular technique unless its struggles, nor is IPM dependent on tactics as resistance grows [23,24]. Integrated pest management denotes a strategic planning and efficient allocation of resources, which encourages a balanced and coordinated usage of mechanical, biological, cultural, and chemical applications for both the control and resistance of pests underneath a sensible ecological principle [25]. However, the history of IPM can be traced back to the late 1800s, when ecology was identified as the foundation for scientific plant protection [17,26]. Since then, several authors have been dealing with IPM, and they have mostly covered the culture, ecosystem, and species of pests [27,28]; the assessment of conceptual framework within IPM formulation and practices [29,30,31]; the prevention and suppression of pests from entering into farms [32,33,34]; monitoring [35,36] economic thresholds derived from effective monitoring [37,38] and modular structure and web-based decision support frameworks [39,40]; utilisation of push–pull approaches with ecological prospects [41,42,43,44], area-wide networking approaches [45,46,47,48,49], and non-chemical prevention over chemical interactions [50,51,52,53]; reduction of reliance on pesticides [54,55,56], application frequency and resorting to the partial application of pesticides [57,58,59], anti-resistance strategies [23,60,61], etc. Apart from the profound studies mentioned earlier, some researchers have reviewed the field of IPM, such as Young [62] who conducted a systematic literature review to capture the trends and gaps in IPM, but the study was based merely on the United States. Bortolotto et al. [63] evaluated the importance of soybean in IPM but merely reviewed it by focusing only on Brazil. Lefebvre et al. [64] explored the adoption tendencies of IPM within Europe by evaluating the impacts of incentives and policies. Sorby et al. [65] provided multiple case studies highlighting the role of a range of players in the IPM program, emphasising the World Bank’s existing initiatives and its attempts to encourage and transmit the advantages of IPM.

In contrast, we found a lack of research that can comprehensively map the IPM field based on structured methods and in-depth bibliographic analysis. Without any comprehensive definition and years of work compiled, assessing what has been studied concerning IPM, how the concept developed over time, and evaluating the present status as well as the prospects will provide profound research values [62]. Therefore, the study’s prime aim is to provide an in-depth mapping of the domain of IPM research published and indexed in the Web of Science core collection database by employing bibliometric analysis. Moreover, we assess the past literature, tracing the present trends and formulating future research directions regarding IPM. By exploring the following research questions, we pay colossal attention to the prime research goals:

RQ1: What are the key elements of IPM globally studied in the literature?

RQ2: What is the state of crucial research elements by which the IPM literature flourished over the last 30 years?

RQ3: Within this significant research domain, what is the nature of the interconnections among the various stakeholders, including authors, institutions, and countries?

RQ4: In terms of centrality and density evaluations, how are the key themes distributed within the network?

RQ5: In terms of the IPM corpus, what are the research gaps that can guide future studies?

Using a bibliometric methodology can facilitate the characterisation of the development and overall state of integrated pest management (IPM) studies while providing a more relevant and robust statistical evaluation [66]. Bibliometric assessment has a long history that began in the middle of the 20th century. Garfield and Sher [67] first introduced the concepts of Bibliometrics. After that, Eugene Garfield [68] developed the idea of citation indexing in the early 1960s, which served as the highlighting framework for bibliometrics. As part of his research, Garfield examined citations in academic works to assess the significance and effect of articles. In contrast, the emergence of digital databases and worldwide internet access has significantly contributed to the advancement of bibliometric analysis [69,70]. Currently, bibliometric analysis is extensively employed in diverse fields of study, encompassing the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities [71,72]. Seemingly, bibliometric analysis is a widely used methodology within the agriculture domain. More specifically, within crop protection, bibliometric assessments are gaining much more momentum [73,74,75]. In the study, we utilised a systematic structural approach for screening the resources, portraying the visualisation along with the literature review, designing the article, and accumulating the bibliographical information as recommended by Rowley and Slack [76].

2. Materials and Methods

To feed the research question, we have analysed the past and present conditions, characteristics, and hotspots of current research trends and presented a systematic path for future research directions. The studies’ base relies on bibliometric analysis and network analysis. To effectively endorse those core methodological frameworks, we utilised robust analytical tools such as the Bibliometric Package of R (Biblioshiny) and CiteSpace for converting and analysing the data, as suggested by B. Fahmina et al. [71]. Biblioshiny and CiteSpace are flexible, user-friendly, and easy-to-use software [70], which will best fit our analysis as it provides different output options that can be processed with various visualisation software like Gephi, VOSViewer, and Pajek. We used VOSViewer and CiteSpace as visual analytical tools to present more robust analytical results like collaboration networks between authors, institutions and countries [73,77]. It also helps to identify the field of study, delivers an insight view of recent progression and hot themes of the research field, and illustrates a proper guideline for future research [74,78]. In addition, to fulfil the research goals, we also evaluate the interconnection among the core themes, as suggested by Gong et al. [79] and Ellegaard and Wallin [80]. In the current study, we follow a five-stage methodology for gathering the published bibliographic data and system design for the aimed field (IPM) to quantify the highest relevant paper and describe it as follows.

2.1. Select the Search Keyword

For selecting the potential keywords, we referred to various journal articles, books, and scholarly reports, and some informal discussion has also been conducted with some agriculture extension officers and renowned professors working in the field of IPM. “Integrated Pest Management”, “IPM”, “Integrated Pest Control”, “IPC”, “Integrated Crop Protection”, “Integrated Plant Protection”, “Integrated weed Management”, and “Integrated Weed Control” are used as a keyword for data collection for fulfilling the research objective. If we closely quantify the definition of IPM as evaluated within the Section 1 of the study, we can find the following five essential perspectives:

• Identify the pest and understand its biology;
• Monitor pest populations;
• Development of sound pest management goals;
• Implement climate resilience tactics to manage pests;
• Records and evaluate findings of the bio-chemical way of pest control.

While collecting the necessary data, we have carefully maintained that the combination of keywords selected for this study must cover all these essential aspects.

2.2. Select the Database

The information was gathered from the webserver of Clarivate Analytics, popularly known as the Web of Science (WoS), a platform that is used by a wide range of scientific studies in the field of bibliometric, for example, B. Wang et al. [66] and Gorraiz and Schloegl [81]. We mainly used the Web of Science core collection database, covering over 20,300 journals, books, and conferences with over 71 million records [82]. The academics also appreciated the WoS of the database for high-quality archiving source material used by numerous previous researchers as a robust and high-quality data source. Most cases are superior to other bibliometric databases like Google scholars and Microsoft academics, as stated by various authors working on similar bibliometric approaches, such as Fahimnia et al. [71] and Gong et al. [79].

2.3. Initial Search Results

We gathered and processed only the journal publications published in English. In contrast, conference proceedings, books, and book chapters have been omitted (as a journal article is considered highly valuable) for defined search terms via the Web of Science database, as suggested by Fahimnia et al. [71] and Young [62]. For more profound analysis and access to all possible bibliographic data, we select the data from the core collection option, and the searches have been performed within the context of the title (we choose only those articles that at least contain any of the searched items). Moreover, we select “all field option”, including authors, titles, sources, abstract, citations (local and global), and cited references, for extracting the data for further analysis. Regarding the initials stage, we found 24,135 published studies (The last search was performed on 31 December 2022). The primary search results and the results after filtering are presented in Figure 1.

2.4. Refinement of the Search Results

We found some papers from the initial 24,135 articles that might appear in multiple categories. After removing those, it leaves 1701 unique papers. These include unreferenced short documents unrelated to scientific contributions like commercial magazines. We extended the refinement procedure (remove the commercial papers without referred papers and papers without author information; these papers do not amplify our research questions) and formulated 1217 published articles. All the crucial bibliographic data are downloaded into plain text format for initiating refinement and further analysis. After that, we used “Biblioshiny and Citespace” apps for further filtration, conversion, and data processing. Figure 1 represents the framework we adopt for designing our work.

2.5. Analytical Framework

Based on a citation research experiment’s strength, we follow an inductive reasoning analytic method for presenting data analysis. Before the final statistical analysis, a good structure tactic is used, as stated previously, to fulfil the literature categorisation part for feeding the objectives of the current study. The structured review of information was carried out in two parts: (i) “bibliometric study” and then followed by (ii) “network analysis”, as portrayed in Section 3 and Section 4. Biblioshiny and CiteSpace software give bibliometric analysis a robust touch for further data statistics, including detailed investigations about keywords, authors, and affiliations.

We utilised two widely used software packages for network analysis, CiteSpace and VOSViewer, to accomplish the citation and co-citation exploration and classify the existing literature on IPM. VOSViewer [84] and CiteSpace [85] were chosen for their reliability with large datasets and for offering a range of creative visualisation, breakdown, and investigative possibilities from prevailing network analytical packages such as Pajek [86] and Gephi [87].

3. Results

In the modern era of bibliometric analysis, various authors have used various software packages. HistCite, BibExcel, CiteSpace, and Bibliometrics Package of R (Biblioshiny) are some of the most used tools [80,88]. In our study, we utilised Bibliometric packages of R (Biblioshiny) and CiteSpace to perform the bibliometric analysis as Aria and Cuccurullo [70] suggested. The insights contained within this analysis may assist in providing an initial orientation for new authors, guiding them towards future studies in the field. This review provides a comprehensive analysis of the research gaps, thereby enabling researchers to gain a deeper understanding of them and develop strategies to address them. This study utilised the Web of Science core collection database (WoS) to search related articles by using the selected keywords, which list up to 24135 publications until 31 December 2022. With some systematic filtration process, finally, 1217 articles were selected for further analysis.

3.1. Initial Data Statistics

The publication progressions and states are graphically presented in Figure 2. Such results reveal exponential increases in articles as the area grows and develops in its early phase. According to preliminary estimates, 1217 articles were covered within 306 journals. The total number of publications issued between 1993 to 2022 (31 December) has been carefully selected for further evaluation. We found that the 15 journal covers roughly 39% (338 articles) of the published work. In total, 3 journals covered up approximately 16% of the published work (Crop Protection, Journal of Economic Entomology, and Indian Journal of Agricultural Sciences contain 54, 42, and 41, respectively).

3.2. Annual Distribution and Citation Trends of Articles Regarding IPM

The annual distribution of the articles could be evaluated by time series or monitored by various phases. The study utilised both tactics to trace the progression, development, and overall variation of different stages’ research trends. Though the study found uneven growth in terms of publication count, in the last five years, the research domain of IPM has increased, as portrayed in Figure 2. Research evaluation is generally divided by the amount of paper and the timeframe. The review indicates substantial publication duration and a limited quantity of articles within the earlier periods of IPM. Figure 2 shows that 2011, 2015, and 2017 to 2022 were the most productive years, producing more than 50 articles each year, accounting for 44% of total publications.

3.3. Most Influential Research Areas

Table 1. Top ten research areas of published articles on IPM between 1993 and 31 December 2022.

Web of Science Categories	Records	% of 870	H-Index	Citation
Agronomy	266	30.575	30	3478
Entomology	220	25.287	31	3733
Agriculture and Multidisciplinary	138	15.862	18	1394
Plant Sciences	114	13.103	24	1902
Environmental Sciences	53	6.092	14	579
Ecology	43	4.943	17	907
Food Science Technology	24	2.759	14	579
Economics	23	2.644	13	509
Biology	22	2.529	10	678
Multidisciplinary Sciences	21	2.414	7	340

denotes the top 10 research areas comprised by the use of the h-index, where we found that a large number of published papers on IPM were profoundly distributed within the area of Agronomy (30.6%), Entomology (25.3%), Agriculture, and Multidisciplinary (15.9%), as shown Table 1. As per the citation count, the top four research areas are also considered the most popular, with more than 1300 citations. Moreover, there is a substantial amount of evidence by classifying the set of publications in Plant Sciences areas (13.1%). It is significant to mark that based on the ordering of the study zones, which WoS project, one manuscript can be categorised within several areas, such as some of the articles related to Agriculture and Entomology, as these two terms are vastly interconnected. To remove those issues, we carefully extracted the article and thoroughly checked those for finding duplicate articles. This process helps us to remove the multicollinearity issues of our data.

3.4. Influential Countries Associated with IPM

By analysing 107 nodes and 473 links, the country cooperation network is generated (Figure 3). The USA was the country that has the highest publication volume, which has 349 papers, followed by India (157 papers), China (89 papers), Australia (71 papers), England (64 papers), Italy (56 papers), France (53 papers), Germany (45 papers), Spain (44 papers), and Canada (42 papers). The countries with the highest centrality were the USA (0.66), England (0.26), and Germany (0.16). The USA ranked in the top position regarding publication volume and centrality.

Moreover, the lack of technology, capital, and talent pools in many developing countries makes it difficult to occupy many seats worldwide. China and India are the only developing countries listed among the top 10 countries in the document number. The possible reason may relate to Indians, and the Chinese have a long history and rich traditional knowledge in agriculture.

3.5. Influential Authors

The top 10 productive authors and the number of publications they have published and co-authored are listed in

Table 2. Most relevant authors.

Article Counts	Authors	Institution
8	Tang, Sanyi	Shaanxi Normal University
7	Ekesi, Sunday	International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE)
6	Mohamed, Samira A	International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE)
5	Arora, Sumitra	National Centre for Integrated Pest Management
5	Cheke, Robert A	University of Greenwich
5	Tamo, Manuele	International Institute of Tropical Agriculture IITA-Benin
5	Wang, Changlu	Rutgers University
4	Ahuja, D B	ICAR-National Research Centre for Integrated Pest Management
4	Xiang, Changcheng	Hubei Minzu University
4	Oliver, Randy	ScientificBeekeeping.com, Grass Valley

. The author with the highest number of published articles was Tang, Sanyi (eight papers), Ekesi, Sunday (seven papers), Mohamed, Samira A (six papers), Arora, Sumitra (five papers), Cheke, Robert A (five papers), Tamo, Manuele (five papers), Wang, Changlu (five papers), Ahuja, D B (four papers), Xiang, Changcheng (four papers), Oliver, Randy (four papers).

3.6. Relevant Affiliation

A thorough review of high-performing academic research organisations in the IPM field could be an excellent way to evaluate the most influential ones. We carefully extracted the affiliations of the top 90 research institutes from the Biblioshiny app and compiled them based on their geographical locations. We meticulously extracted the affiliations of the leading 90 research institutes from the Biblioshiny app and subsequently organised them based on their respective geographic locations. This approach allowed us to understand better the distribution and concentration of IPM research across different regions. The web application of www.mapvisualizer.com (accessed on 12 April 2023) was utilised to create the geographical location illustrated in Figure 4 meticulously. This figure depicts the geographical distribution of the top 90 research institutes’ affiliations extracted from the Biblioshiny app and compiled based on their locations. IPM has drawn global organisations and institutions for its study and application, with a broad territorial presence in the USA, Europe, and Asia. The full version of the location map can be accessed from the following link https://www.mapcustomizer.com/map/apurbo?utm_source=share&utm_medium=email (accessed on 12 April 2023).

After evaluating the top institutions based on the number of articles, they have produced on IPM, a comprehensive list of these institutions is presented in

Table 3. Research institutions and cited frequency.

No	Organisation	Documents Number	Average Cited Frequency
1	Cornell University	32	41
2	The University of California Davis	31	21
3	North Carolina State University	31	23
4	University of Florida	28	21
5	University of Georgia	18	13
6	Aarhus University	16	11
7	Penn State University	16	19
8	Purdue University	16	15
9	The University of Queensland	16	12
10	Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences	14	9

. The table revealed that ten institutions had produced a minimum of fourteen articles each on IPM, indicating a substantial level of research output and expertise in this field. This information can be helpful for policymakers, research managers, and scholars interested in collaborating with these institutions or studying their approaches to IPM research. Table 3 portrayed that Cornell University, the University of California Davis, North Carolina State University, the University of Florida, the University of Georgia, Aarhus University, Penn State University, Purdue University, The University of Queensland, and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences have been found as an impactful instruction in terms of IPM research.

3.7. Journal-Wise Contribution to Publications

The journal cooperation network analysis generated a figure consisting of 868 nodes and 6246 links (

Table 4. Top 10 prominent journals on IPM as per total publication count.

Count	Impact Factor	Cited Journal
374	3.036	Crop Protection
360	2.447	Journal of Economic Entomology
272	22.682	Annual Review of Entomology
239	4.463	Pest Management Science
205	6.576	Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment
199	2.387	Environmental Entomology
152	3.857	Biological Control
145	2.58	Weed Science
136	3.752	PLoS One
133	2.183	Journal of Applied Entomology

). The top 10 journals in terms of publication number were Crop Protection (374 papers), Journal of Economic Entomology (360 papers), Annual Review of Entomology (272 papers), Pest Management Science (239 papers), Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment (205 papers), Environmental Entomology (199 papers), Biological Control (152 papers), Weed Science (145 papers), PLOS One (136 papers), and Journal of Applied Entomology (133 papers).

3.8. Keyword Statistics

Keywords profoundly illustrate the research objective and explain the core motive in detail [90].

Table 5. Top 20 keywords appeared in the title of the article.

Keyword	Occurrences	Keyword	Occurrences
Integrated pest management/or IPM	277	Adoption	27
Biological control	100	Population	27
Integrated weed management	62	Farmers	24
Resistance	59	Pest management	21
Management	38	Dynamics	19
Yield	38	Strategy	19
Growth	34	Natural enemy	17
Impact	34	Lepidoptera	17
Agriculture	32	Soil	17
Pesticides	27	Cover crops	16

denotes the top 20 keywords that appeared in the titles of the IPM-related paper, which is crafted with CiteSpace software.

Figure 5 denotes the top 20 keywords associated with the notion of IPM, where we selected the keywords that appear over ten times. The figure shows that “Integrated pest management/or IPM” has the most occurrences in this field (277 occurrences). Seemingly, “Biological control” is the second keyword, which has 100 occurrences. The third keyword was “integrated weed management” (62 occurrences). The fourth keyword was “resistance” (59 occurrences). The fifth keyword was “management” (38 occurrences).

3.9. Mostly Cited Articles

By evaluating the most frequently cited IPM publications, this study aims to identify the key scientific articles and influential researchers in the field. The Biblioshiny application identified 10 highly cited (more than 165 global citations) publications out of 1217 by examining citation frequency and related notes. Gould [91] was cited up to 937, and Cook et al. [41] were cited 713 times globally, as shown in Table 2. Gould [91] evaluated all the issues involving the implementation tactics to delay pest issues to insecticidal cultivars by employing the integrating approaches of Pest Genetics and Ecology. It is denoted as an exceptional contribution to thoroughly evaluate transgenic cultivars’ potential effects on dynamic forces of insect populace and the “high dose”/refuge approach. High-dose/refuge approaches are mostly valuables for the industries and policymakers that may have triggered the article’s enormous global citation count. Cook et al. [41] addressed the ideologies of the push-and-pull approach, prioritises all the associated factors, and provide some robust case lessons for quantifying the progression of push–pull tactics within the context of IPM implementation. They described push–pull techniques as a robust basement of IPM tactics which usually optimise the behavioural stimulation output by combining their application with substances and efficiencies as it reduced the use of toxic pesticides.

About 27% of the article are cited only once time yet.

Table 6. Highly cited literature regarding IPM.

Citation	The Titles of the Articles	Literature Sources	Global Citation	Average Citation	Local Citation
Gould [91]	Sustainability of Transgenic Insecticidal Cultivars: Integrating Pest Genetics and Ecology.	Annual Review of Entomology	937	39	10
Cook et al. [41]	The Use of Push–Pull Strategies in Integrated Pest Management.		713	45	26
Kogan [17]	Integrated Pest Management: Historical Perspectives and Contemporary Developments.		494	21	69
Cini et al. [92]	A review of the invasion of Drosophila suzukii in Europe and a draft research agenda for integrated pest management.	Bulletin Of Insectology	338	34	0
Chandler et al. [93]	The development, regulation, and use of biopesticides for integrated pest management	Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences	238	22	8
Ratnadass et al. [94]	Plant species diversity for sustainable management of crop pests and diseases in agroecosystems: a review	Agronomy for Sustainable Development	237	24	6
Gregory et al. [95]	Integrating pests and pathogens into the climate change/food security debate	Journal of Experimental Botany	236	18	3
Guedes et al. [56]	Pesticide-Induced Stress in Arthropod Pests for Optimised Integrated Pest Management Programs	Annual Review of Entomology	234	39	1
Roberts and Paul [96]	Seduced by the dark side: integrating molecular and ecological perspectives on the influence of light on plant defence against pests and pathogens	New Phytologist	201	13	0
Baker et al. [97]	Pesticide residues in conventional, integrated pest management (IPM)-grown and organic foods: insights from three U.S. data sets	Food Additives and Contaminants	167	8	7

reveals that 10 highly cited studies hold at least 165 or more citations within a global context. Moreover, Table 6 implies a substantial difference between the frequency of global and local citations. “Local citation” denotes a paper’s cited frequency by the selected 1217 article network, and “global citation” represents the overall WoS citation count for the article. Our study found a noticeable gap between the cited frequency on a local and global scale, which illustrates that IPM research has also drawn some substantial attention among other study fields (i.e., they gain citation by the study apart from the current search terms of IPM). It can be noticed in Table 6 that there is a considerable mismatch between global and local citations. For example, Gould [91] secured the highest position in terms of global citation count, but it is far behind the local citation. A prime cause will be that he evaluates well-structured principles for quantifying the best output of IPM methodology, as stated earlier, and the methodological evaluation mostly is cited terms, not only for its content but also its implementation values.

Table 6 represents the top 10 articles with at least a past five-year time span, and most of the recent articles that have not yet received any citation are excluded from our analysis as those do not influence the citation network. However, Tang SY and Cheke RA not only hold their position among the list of top productive authors (Table 2) but also their study holds a prominent position within the highly cited documents list (Table 6). It implies that they are outstanding and dominant researchers towards disseminating knowledge regarding IPM. Meanwhile, the most cited articles needed ample time to draw citations as a shared principle [98]. Therefore, the “average citation” metrics (Globals citations distributed over the number of years since published) are well-known methods for measuring the direct influence of most other articles published recently [78]. According to the outcomes shown in Table 6, Cook et al. [41], Guedes et al. [56], and Gould [91] are positioned among the top three according to the average citations per year with 45, 39, and 39 citations per year.

3.10. Co-Citation Network Analysis

Co-Citation analysis, a method developed by bibliometric research, is demonstrated to identify the key literature for cross-disciplinary ideas [99]. Visualisation of a co-citation network is an exploratory analytical tactic that can quantify the graph theory to explore a database for finding the intellectual structure of particular topics. A co-citation projection comprises a series of nodes featuring cited articles and a terminal node, illustrating its co-occurrence frequencies within the particular studies references list [98]. Co-citation visualisation contains nodes that reflect research papers and edges representing the nodes and publications in the list of documents on this map. Articles that appear in the reference list of another article are considered co-cited and suggest that articles cited most frequently by other articles are more closely related and considered in the same field.

The co-citation network was generated based on publications from 1993 to 2022. The reference selection criteria were based on the modified g-index in each slice, and the scale factor “K” was set to 25. The network contains 300 co-citation clusters consisting of 1217 records. The network was set only to show the size of clusters greater than five. Therefore, 9 out of 300 clusters are shown in Figure 6. Label clustering was based on the combination of title terms, keywords and abstract terms of citing articles and is formed by LLR (log-likelihood ratio) analysis method. The total nine clusters are presented on the right side of Figure 6. Each cluster represents the general summary of the nodes in its row. For example, “#0 farmers intention” indicates that based on the combined analysis of title terms, keywords, and abstract terms, the “farmers intention” was the most representative word in this cluster, and it was ranked first in the ranking number starting from 0. By analysing Figure 6, nine clusters could be listed, which were “#0 farmers intention”, “#1 host–parasitoid model”, “#2 risk assessment”, “#3 policy bottleneck”, “#4 pollinator management”, “#6 apple orchard”, “#10 integrated weed management framework”, “#31 action”, and “#53 integrated feedback control”.

Each cluster corresponds to nodes in each row. The different colour of nodes indicates the different time they are published. The larger the size of a node, the more frequently it is cited. For each cluster, the top three most highly cited papers were labelled. The order of labels is based on the frequency of cited. The top label is the most cited, and the bottom label is the least cited among these three. The labels contain three pieces of information: the author’s name, year of publication, and the time paper cited. For example, in the cluster “#0 farmers intention”, the top three most cited papers in this cluster were Pretty J., Stenberg J.A. and Peterson Robert K.D., respectively, and the frequency of paper cited were 16, 13, and 8 times, respectively.

Table 7. Information for each cluster.

Cluster Number	Cluster Label	Size	Silhouette Value	Mean Year
0	Farmers intention	66	0.886	2015
1	Host–parasitoid model	40	0.998	2009
2	Risk assessment	30	0.997	2014
3	Policy bottleneck	29	0.94	2019
4	Pollinator management	23	0.864	2018
6	Apple orchard	19	0.975	2016
10	Integrated weed management framework	15	0.961	2018
31	Action	8	0.979	2017
53	Integrated feedback control	5	1	2016

presents the exact node number in each cluster. The maximum code number was the “farmers intention” (66 counts), and the minimum code number was the “integrated feedback control” (5 counts). Each cluster had a silhouette value > 0.7. The silhouette value is the indicator that measures the homogeneity of the cluster network. The value of silhouette closer to 1, the homogeneity of the cluster network higher. The clustering result had high reliability when the silhouette value was >0.7 [100]. The evaluation of the associated themes and the strongest citations burst and are presented in Figure A1 (Appendix A) and Figure A2 (Appendix B).

3.11. Clustering and Scaling of Crucial Concepts of IPM

To provide a structured representation of how the patterns of the themes are spreading within the dimension of integrated pest management by the multi-scaling algorithm of Biblioshiny, we initiated the analysis by exploratory cluster analysis of the themes and sequences popularly known as “Topic Dendrogram”. Figure 7 denotes the graphical view of the “topic dendrogram”, which comprises 50 critical terms based on the article’s title dynamics. Dendrogram suggested five district clusters that could be vital for exploring the author’s views and how authors crafted the concepts and quantified their article’s design. Figure 7 presents a diagram that shows the hierarchical relationship between the associated keywords. Cluster one consists of three core concepts of integrating, plant and protection, and cluster two denotes resistance and chemical, whereas cluster three consists of the keywords including case, study, application, IPM, fields, impacts and pest. Cluster four denotes soybean, systems, pest management, weed, production, control, yields, rice, and cropping. Farmers, programme, adoption, cotton, apple, and knowledge are the most influential keywords of cluster five.

4. Observations and Discussions

Since the Green Climate Fund was established in the 2010 Cancun Conference of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, profound attention has been given to financing climate change and environmental protection activities [101]. Thus, academic studies in the field of IPM have gained much momentum from 2011 to 2022, and a steep rise has been observed from 2018 onwards. Leading publications were completed in 2020 highlighting the increase in academic involvement in identifying strategies for transitioning the financial system towards sustainability. The results also highlight that participation and academic involvement of developed countries have been more than that of developing countries. Among the developing countries, China and India are listed in the top 10 countries regarding the total number of publications.

Regarding journal publications, Climate Policy, Sustainability, and Journal of Sustainable Finance and Investment are the top three journals publishing articles on the area related to IPM. Most of the top authors have recently started publishing in the field, and apart from the top, most subject areas like environmental sciences, social sciences and economics, econometrics and finance, various interdisciplinary work have been conducted in recent years. Overall, this study portrayed a more transparent background and profound data boon that will help academia, scientists, and governments understand how IPM-centred studies are crafting impacts towards the environment and its potential long-term impacts. Based on the above discussion and evaluations of IPM-related studies, our studies observe that IPM mainly comprises three centralistic dimensions: Most IPM-related research framework is mainly derived from ecological and health-related issues. In contrast, the research centred on enhancing the farmer’s health, economic threshold, and environmental safety.

4.1. Environmentally Friendly Agricultural Practices and Plant/Crop Protection

Most IPM-related research framework is mainly derived from ecological and health-related issues. In contrast, the research centred on enhancing the farmer’s health, economic threshold, and environmental safety [17,56,102]. Specifically, the goal of IPM is to minimise the negative impact on the environment by understanding the life cycle and behaviour of pests, maximise the utilisation of organic and biological control and enable farmers to achieve optimal economic and social benefits [91,103]. IPM has received support from nearly all multilateral environmental agreements that have reshaped the worldwide policy framework for managing natural resources, agriculture, and trade [104,105].

4.2. Biodiversity, Ecosystem Services

The resources provided by ecosystems are advantages to humankind. Biodiversity may be an environmentally conscious-change measure and a cause that alters the environment’s structures and resources [106,107]. This study shows how many flourishing organisms, their diverse variation and their heterogeneity are included in organisms (genetic diversity), between organisms (diversity of species), and within ecosystems (diversity of ecosystems). Along with controlled agroecosystems, biodiversity is critical throughout all settings because it offers various responsive alternatives [108,109]. When an effect like global warming threatens any particular mechanism, a species function’s dynamic variability can act as an alternative with higher resistance towards such threatening circumstances [110,111]. Numerous species could also have a vital attachment component to the environment and could be devastating for maintaining sustainable and balanced ecosystems [112,113].

Throughout the agroecological domain, biodiversity could primarily be affected by the functional views of managing and controlling pests. It is because predominantly chemical-based control can profoundly adversely impact biodiversity and bio-network mechanisms [114,115]. Conversely, structural variation is necessary to maintain a tolerable degree of pests. Insecticides have different impacts on biological organisms and pathogens by nature [116,117]. For evidence, insecticides have more impact on spiders and hymenopteran parasitic organisms that decrease predation, which may induce escapes of “natural foes” to spread pathogenic epidemics and pest outbreaks. Areas with resilient chemicals seem to have fewer habitats and poor biological management systems from their natural enemies and could be vulnerable to insect incursions. Technologies of ecosystem modification will improve natural biodiversity enemies and boost favourable biological management resources [118,119]. However, to be successful towards the IPM transition, environmental engineering concepts must be embraced and pesticide use must be controlled to minimise any adverse effects such that bio-control resources can be maximised [120].

4.3. Prevention and Monitoring of Harmful Organisms

Different plant species require specific minerals at various levels. Mostly different species tend to attract their unique pests and pathogens, which momentarily propagate around those particular crop’s ecosystems [121,122]. There are certain chances for the crops to become more vulnerable to particular pathogens and pests if a particular crop is continuously grown within the same places [123]. It could be thriving for crops continuously exhausted of particular minerals, leading to weaker crop growth that could be more devastating for controlling pests. So intercropping and crop rotations could be crucial alternatives for sufficiently addressing some particular pests and diseases [124].

For this reason, those tactics become a vital part of implementing an effective IPM mechanism [125,126]. Crop rotation tactics should be implemented since many pathogens survive on numerous living and dead plant materials. Burning and slotting crop residues are historically deemed necessary to dissuade pests, pathogens, and weeds for phytosanitary purposes [127,128]. For the fruitful implementation of IPM tactics, the greater extent of pest monitoring could be crucial (if possible transboundary) for availing the earlier detection and warning [31,129]. Contingent settlement and coordination planning, early response, pollution management technology, and strong collaborations with impacted nations, regional and multinational farm research centres, and other organisations are considered monitoring tactics [130,131]. While farmers perform the most significant part in managing several pests and beneficial organisms, they should also know what (if any) the reasonable quantity of pests within the farm will be [132,133]. Various agricultural organisations should accomplish mutual collaboration, but the country’s leading institutes should ideally initiate the collaboration. Communication systems should also be developed (e.g., via cell phones), which can warn other growers and act quickly [132,134]. Applying organic chemicals and manure is much more likely to culminate in a new equilibrium of integrated pest management [135,136]. In contrast, farmers need to gain substantial knowledge about the differences between beneficial organisms and pests, crops, and weeds, more interestingly, understand the behaviour of particular pests and pathogens [64,137].

5. Conclusions

This article utilises bibliometric statistics to critically explore the integrated pest management-related articles published in various scholarly journals and provide a comprehensive summary of how theories of IPM develop over time. The main objective of this paper is to investigate and characterise the critical literature on this topic based on past, present, and emerging developments in this cutting-edge area of research using the bibliometric technique for visualising the domain of IPM. The study utilises the bibliometric analysis based on the dataset of 1217 articles collected from the core collection database of the Web of Science to fulfil the prime research goal. Within the study context, we thoroughly reviewed key publications on IPM to demonstrate how integrated pest management might evolve into the dimensions of pest management-related theories. The study demonstrates the various stages of the IPM corpus to comprehend the evaluation of this research area. The evaluation emphasises the primary issues of IPM, which can offer a more comprehensive analysis to shape the future of this significant research domain. Since this study is one of the few that has been carefully developed to fill the comprehensive gap in the bibliometric exploration of the IPM research, we expect it will contribute to the broad readership of IPM.

However, the study has some limitations and challenges that future researchers should consider. First, the study is based on a single database, potentially limiting the amount of data. Moreover, we limit our search options to the research article and select only the article containing some specific phrases in the title, which are not necessarily comprehended as the complete data sets. This is a significant drawback, as our analysis focused exclusively on research articles published in journals, excluding reviews, conferences, books, and book chapters. Future researchers should include other databases, such as Scopus and Science Direct, which will allow researchers to grasp more robust data. As a result, our study’s ability to provide a comprehensive mapping of the field may have been restricted.