Scientific Coverage in Community-Based Tourism: Sustainable Tourism and Strategy for Social Development

Abstract

In the last decades in developing countries, the tourism sector has been immersed in an intense process of strengthening the participation of local communities through the so-called community tourism initiatives, whose main objective is to improve the quality of life of the inhabitants of host communities, ensuring the subsistence of traditional culture. Its growing momentum as a means for sustainable tourism and a strategy for social development has generated a large amount of academic literature, and it is necessary to analyze its presence in the main multidisciplinary databases. Thus, the main purpose of our article is to show the current state of scientific production on community tourism through a bibliometric comparative study of the documents indexed in the WoS and Scopus databases, dealing with aspects such as their coverage, correlation between both bases, overlapping of documents and journals, growth, dispersion or concentration of articles, among others. For this purpose, and by means of an advanced search by terms, a representative set of 115 articles in WoS and 185 in Scopus were selected, with the time limit set in 2017. These form the ad-hoc basis of the analysis. In view of the results, it is concluded that, although WoS and Scopus databases differ in terms of scope, volume of data, and coverage policies, both information systems are complementary but not exclusive. Although the documents and the results of their analysis are in many aspects similar, Scopus has a better coverage in the specific area of community tourism due to collecting a greater number of articles, journals and signatures, and its articles receiving a greater number of citations.

1. Introduction

Tourism has made a significant contribution to the economy of many communities around the world due to its ability to generate income and employment [1]. However, despite being a source of great economic benefits, its unplanned growth has also contributed significantly to environmental degradation and negative social-cultural impacts [2]. These undesirable side effects have led to growing concerns about the conservation and preservation of natural resources, human well-being, and long-term economic viability [3], seeking new forms of tourism planning, management, and development. As an alternative to the traditional tourist model, where the interrelation with the local population is practically non-existent, in recent years we have been witnessing a change in tourists’ behaviour, eager for new experiences that allow sustainable development and a more direct contact with the local actors of the destination, where the local culture of the area, its customs, its gastronomy, and its own history are becoming increasingly more important.

Community tourism is an endogenous alternative to outsourced tourism strategies in poorly developed regions, enabling the creation of specific destinations that allow local communities to generate wealth with a new complementary activity, never a substitution, of the traditional dominant one. It is, therefore, a form of sustainable tourism based on the community that aims to satisfy the needs of both residents and current tourists without compromising the needs of future generations, who live or visit the tourist destination. Thus, community tourism with a sustainable nature must aim at improving the living standards of residents while optimizing local economic benefits, minimizing the adverse effects of tourism, protecting the natural and built environment and providing a quality experience to visitors [4].

Therefore, it is essential to promote the participation of the community in the tourism planning process where decision-making involves all stakeholders and where the benefits have an impact on the community itself. The aim is to preserve the ethnic identity, values and cultural heritage of indigenous communities, while helping them to adapt to change and open their mentality, making them an essential part of the tourism product [5].

In the last three decades, there has been an increase in literature on sustainable and community tourism. While the sustainable tourism discourse focuses on long-term sustainability, the literature on community-based tourism looks at responsibilities and practices at the local level of development and management. Due to the interest aroused within the academic world, the fundamental objective of this work is to perform an analysis of the published literature of a scientific nature related to Community Tourism through a bibliometric-comparative study of the articles indexed in WoS and Scopus, which enables to determine which of the two bases has a greater coverage, as well as the overlap between the two. In addition, and as secondary objectives, by means of statistical methods, bibliometric indicators, and analysis of citations, the aim is to know how much, who, what, where, and how Community Tourism has been investigated, providing useful information for academics and professionals by providing a series of significant indicators to measure the bibliographic material allowing for the determination trends and identification of research areas.

Bibliographic databases play a key role in bibliometric research, since they enable analysis of the scientific activity carried out by researchers, centers, regions and countries in order to detect their strengths and weaknesses and to identify trends in research. The validity of the work will depend on its adequate selection since it must cover the area under study sufficiently [6]. In order to locate documents focused on Community Tourism, and indexed both in WoS and in Scopus, an advanced search for terms with a time limit set in 2017 was carried out within both bases. As a result, a set of 115 articles in WoS and 185 in Scopus were selected, which constitute the empirical ad hoc basis of the study, later processed through the bibliographic manager Refworks.

This article is structured into four main sections. First, and after this introduction, we proceed to review the academic literature in order to establish the theoretical framework. Next, in Section 3, both the methodology of the calculations and the tracking strategy used for the selection of the references are described. In point 4, the main results obtained from the study of the basic bibliometric indicators, as well as from the overlap and singularity analysis between the bases are detailed. Finally, in Section 5, the final conclusions reached, and the limitations associated with the research, are presented.

2. Theoretical Framework

As a concept, Community Tourism or Community-Based Tourism (CBT) appears for the first time in academic literature in the book Tourism: A community approach by Murphy [7], where aspects related to tourism in the rural areas of the most disadvantaged countries are analyzed, a subject that the same author addresses in later studies [8,9]. This concept is closely related to other ideas regarding tourism and the host community, such as the following: tourism against poverty (Pro-Poor Tourism -PPT-), which analyzes the role of tourism in fighting poverty in certain areas [10]; Community Benefit Tourism Initiatives (CBTIs), where there is the need to search for economic benefits for the community based on the fact that the community has the ownership, management and control of the tourism projects to be developed [11]; or the concept of promotion through international cooperation of community tourism (donor-assisted, community-based tourism -DACBT-), promoted by International Cooperation agencies and that allows local communities characterized by subsistence economies to obtain money to undertake with their own microenterprises [12].

There are many definitions of the term CBT: for France [13], it is a type of tourism managed by and for the local community; Mathieson & Wall [14] highlight both the economic and social benefits that community-based tourism provides locally; Shaw & William [15] establish that tourism planning should be implemented with community involvement and consensus, promoting community actions above all individual actions. Pearce [16] suggests that CBT gives the local entity decision-making control based on consensus and an equitable flow of benefits for all stakeholders, while Haywood believes that “prosperous and healthy communities are the cornerstone for a successful tourism industry” [17] (p. 105).

Cañada [18] understands Community Tourism as a management model of tourism activity in which the local population of a certain disadvantaged territory, and through different organizational structures of a collective nature, exerts a predominant role in the control of its design, implementation, management, and distribution of benefits. For López-Gúzman & Sánchez Cañizares [5] (p. 89), it is an activity that “is based on the creation of tourism products under the basic principle of the necessary involvement of the local community”. In this sense, for Casas-Jurados et al., [19] (p. 93), Community Tourism refers to tourism that “is based on the local community” and “that aims to reduce a negative impact and reinforce a positive impact”. In any case, tourism development must consider and respect local needs and their ways of life to avoid conflict related to the local culture [15].

As can be seen from the previous definitions established, the literature related to CBT focuses its analysis on the relationship between the tourism industry and the host community, highlighting the participation of the host population as one of the pillars on which planning, maintenance and development of the tourism sector in order to promote its sustainability are supported [20].

However, within the vast literature on CBT, while the participation of the resident community is a relatively ubiquitous principle, community ownership and resident control over decision-making face significant challenges. In a critical summary of several “community-driven” development projects around the world, Mansuri & Rao provide valuable information on the political (and cultural) problem by carefully distinguishing community-driven development from community-based development. “Community development is a general term for projects that actively include the recipients in their design and management, and community-driven development refers to community-based development projects in which communities have direct control over key decisions, including the management of investment funds.” [21] (p. 1–2).

Another noteworthy characteristic, in view of the definitions given, is the close relationship between CBT and sustainable tourism. Therefore, CBT is conceived as “a type of sustainable tourism that promotes strategies in favor of the poor in a community environment. CBT initiatives aim to involve local residents in the operation and management of small tourism projects as a means to alleviate poverty and provide an alternative source of income for community members” [22] (p. 10).

Community Tourism should be considered as a complement, not a substitute, in the revitalizing policies of the local economy, as an instrument that helps mitigate, or at least alleviate, the adverse effects of underdevelopment [23]. For this reason, many studies analyze the implementation of community tourism in the most impoverished areas [24]; Kenya [25,26], Botswana [27], Namibia [28], China [29], Malaysia [30], Thailand [31], Australia [32], Canada [33], Mexico [34], Chile [35], Brazil [36], Peru [37], Costa Rica [38], El Salvador [5], Ecuador [39].

In addition to approaching the issue from a regional perspective, researchers approach their work on CBT considering different points of view. Thus, in some cases it is observed from a more conceptual angle, differentiating the type of tourism that is involved: cultural, ecological, gastronomic, arts and crafts tourism, etc. [40]. In others, it reveals different socio-political aspects of great importance: involvement of the community in decision-making, social integration of marginalized groups or women, economic development, etc. [41]. Other times it is investigated from the point of view of institutional support [42]. In any case, and despite being aspects that are undertaken in a particular way, researchers agree that all these aspects have an important relationship with each other.

Vajirakachorn [43], in his study on the rural communities of Thailand, identified 10 key criteria for successful CBT: local participation, distribution of benefits, preservation of tourism resources, association and support from inside and outside the community, local ownership, local management and leadership, communication and interaction between stakeholders, quality of life, the scale of tourism development and tourist satisfaction. Based on a broader study that included a wide range of cases of rural tourism, community tourism and ecotourism practices in several countries of the Asia-Pacific region, Hatton [44] concluded that while the implementation and results of Community Tourism vary, there are common issues: economic benefit, leadership, empowerment, and employment. But the economic benefits are not the only ones obtained from the practice of CBT: Socioeconomic improvements in general, and sustainable diversification of lifestyles are some of its consequences [45,46].

To achieve these objectives, the different public administrations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), private institutions and the local community itself must get involved and work together. According to Nyaupane et al. [29], one of the main limitations that local communities have to face when implementing tourism projects is, together with the lack of financial resources, infrastructure or knowledge, precisely the potential conflicts between different public administrations. Thus, CBT becomes an effective way to coordinate and implement different policies to avoid conflicts between different tourism actors and obtain synergies based on the exchange of knowledge, analysis and capacity between all community members [25].

On the other hand, one of the most controversial aspects in research work is determining the amount and type of tourists suitable for each community in order to avoid the adverse effects of tourism, such as loss of cultural identity or degradation of natural resources [47]. In this regard, Nyaupane et al. [29] emphasize that receiving a small number of tourists facilitates greater contact with the local culture and society, avoiding the risk of tourists invading private aspects of the local culture, but with the disadvantage, at the same time, of reducing economic resources generated by tourism. Residents in a great variety of communities seem to be positively predisposed towards tourism. This does not imply that they do not have concerns about its impact on their communities, but specific concerns vary from place to place. There are certainly exceptions to residents’ general positive attitudes, as shown by the study of Johnson et al. [48]. However, in general, tourism is a well-accepted and well-thought-out industry [49].

3. Methodology

This section includes the process followed for the preparation of the bibliometric and overlap study between the WoS and Scopus multidisciplinary databases in relation to scientific production on Community-based Tourism, an ideal means to organise and know about academic information, facilitating the description and assessment of the literature and guiding the researcher towards bibliographical sources of interest [50].

In addition, the bibliometric analysis aims to provide useful information for academics and professionals in their study of this area of research by providing a series of significant indicators to measure the bibliographic material. Specifically: number of publications, most prolific authors, countries in which this field is more popular or the journals that devote more attention to it. Others, such as the number of citations or the h index, are a good indicator of the researcher’s influence [51].

3.1. Databases

Since access to the total scientific production is an impossible objective, any bibliometric analysis is limited by the availability, relevance, and reliability of information [52]. Thus, the first step is to identify the database that would be the most useful for the study [53].

Bibliographic databases are the main source of information used in the majority of scientific publications. Their adequate selection and the coverage they make of the study area will largely depend on the validity of the results obtained [54]. It is precisely this fact that makes WoS and Scopus the bases of our study, since both appear frequently as documentation sources in the scientific literature.

The Web of Science. Platform based on web technology created in 1960, owned by Thomson Reuters. It includes several bibliographic databases and information analysis tools that enable the evaluation and analysis of scientific research performance. It collects citations and references of publications of all disciplines of knowledge, scientific, technological, humanistic and sociological since 1945. It is also a widely used database for carrying out bibliometric studies, with a selective coverage of the publications considered of more prestige and visibility [55].

Scopus. It is a bibliographic, multidisciplinary and international database created by the publishers Elsevier in November 2004. Its ability to manage bibliographic references and quantify citations referred to each of them makes Scopus an essential instrument for the analysis of any discipline. In addition, as a bibliographic database of peer-reviewed scientific literature, it provides an overview of global research production in the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts and humanities and whose characteristics have been deeply analyzed in studies such as Goodman & Deis [56] or Bar-Ilan [57], among others.

3.2. Methodology of Calculations

There are two main procedures for carrying out overlap calculations; on the one hand, based on the primary sources that cover the secondary sources, and on the other hand, using the documents (articles) that these sources contain. The first method has the disadvantage of the different document indexing policies of each database; while some transfer all the sources, others do so selectively [58], and the latter requires a greater effort when comparing the databases. This paper analyzes the overlap between WoS and Scopus bases in the Community-Based Tourism research area by following both procedures.

Meyer’s Index

It is also called relative index of singularity or peculiarity. It was developed by Meyer et al. [59] and evaluates the monitoring or coverage that a database performs on a given subject. The result is interpreted as the degree to which such a base covers a specialty or subject [60]. In this indicator, single documents, contained in a single database, are those that have a greater weight or value, weight that will be progressively reduced by duplicate documents (weight = 0.5), triplicates (weight = 0.3), etc., depending on the number of bases to be compared. The higher the value of the index, the greater the singularity of the database, that is, it will collect a greater number of single documents [61].

$$\mathrm{Meyer}’\mathrm{s}\mathrm{index}=\frac{{\displaystyle \sum \mathrm{Sources}\ast \mathrm{Weight}}}{\mathrm{Total}\mathrm{sources}}$$

Traditional Overlap (TO)

To measure the overlap %, or degree of similarity between two bases, traditional overlap (TO), defined by Gluck [62] is usually used, and is calculated using the expression:

$$\%\mathrm{TO}=100\ast \frac{\left|\mathrm{A}{\displaystyle \cap }\mathrm{B}\right|}{\left||\mathrm{A}{\displaystyle \cup }\mathrm{B}\right|}$$

The higher the TO value, the greater the degree of similarity between the bases, that is, a coefficient of 0.3 shows a similarity of 30% or a difference of 70% between them, which would imply that if an adequate selection of the database is not made, we could lose 70% of the documents.

Relative Overlap

Originally developed by Bearman & Kunberger [63], it measures the % of coverage of a database, A, with respect to another one, B.

$$\%\mathrm{Solapamiento}\mathrm{en}\mathrm{A}=100\ast \left(\frac{\left|\mathrm{A}{\displaystyle \cap }\mathrm{B}\right|}{\left|\mathrm{A}\right|}\right);\%\mathrm{Solapamiento}\mathrm{en}\mathrm{B}=100\ast \left(\frac{\left|\mathrm{A}{\displaystyle \cap }\mathrm{B}\right|}{\left|\mathrm{B}\right|}\right)$$

The result is interpreted as the percentage of documents that base A covers of base B.

There is a wide range of useful bibliometric methods to analyze the bibliographic data of a set of documents [64,65]. This work focuses mainly on the total number of articles and citations received, as they are indicators capable of measuring an author’s productivity and influence [66]. To combine both concepts, the study also uses the h index [67], which measures the X number of documents that have received X citations or more and at the same time does not have X + 1 documents with X + 1 citations or more.

3.3. Tracking Methodology

Following the outline of similar studies in the development of bibliometric indicators, only articles published in scientific journals are analyzed because they constitute a representative sample of international scientific activity [68], excluding conference papers, books and chapters, comments, press articles, editorials, notes, letters or errata contained in WoS or Scopus. The process followed to obtain them is shown in Figure 1.

In order to delimit the results to the Community-Based Tourism area, a document tracking strategy was chosen by searching terms whose equation appears in

Table 1. Search strategy.

Search Word	Community Tourism; Community-Based Tourism; Turismo Comunitario
Category	Title
Subject area	ALL
Document type	Journal article
Period time	Year of publication ≤ 2017
Languaje	English
Query String	WoS: TI = (“*communit* *touris*”) OR TI = (“*communit* based *touris*”) OR TI = (“*turis* *comunit*”) AND DT = (ARTICLE) Refined by: Base de datos = (WOS) Scopus: (TITLE (“*communit* *touris*”) OR TITLE (“*communit* based *touris*”) OR TITLE (“*turis* *comunit*”)) AND DOCTYPE (ar) AND PUBYEAR < 2018
Search Date	January 2018

Source: Own elaboration.

. This modality has the advantage of enabling to reach journals classified within all the thematic areas, considered therefore, more exhaustive [69].

Once the documents were selected, the ad hoc database necessary to analyze each of the basic variables of the bibliometric and overlap indicators was developed. One of the main problems of the bibliometric analysis of documents indexed in different databases is a lack of consistency of records, which is why it is essential to carry out a normalization process. For the specific case of authors’ names, the fundamental criterion that was used for their homogenization was the coincidence in the affiliation of the institutional signature associated with the different variants of the names and surnames [70].

After deleting those articles considered irrelevant for our study, the final result was 115 articles published in WoS and 185 in Scopus, all processed with the Refworks bibliographic reference manager.

4. Results and Discussion

4.1. Production

The temporal distribution of articles related to the tourism sub-theme Community Tourism, selected through the search equations seen in the previous section, is shown in

Table 2. Evolution of the number of articles on Community Tourism.

Year	Number of Publications
	WoS	Scopus	WoS U Scopus
1983	0	1	1
1989	1	1	1
1990	1	1	1
1994	0	1	1
1995	2	3	3
1996	1	1	1
1997	1	1	1
1999	0	1	1
2001	0	1	1
2002	1	3	3
2004	2	4	4
2005	2	5	5
2006	1	4	4
2007	1	3	3
2008	5	7	7
2009	3	5	5
2010	6	11	11
2011	6	10	12
2012	1	14	14
2013	10	14	14
2014	6	18	18
2015	19	18	28
2016	18	19	24
2017	28	39	46
∑	115	185	209

Source: Own elaboration.

, where it is observed that the first article to be published was Public Participation in community tourism planning: a gaming simulation approach in 1983 and whose author is Loukissas, P.J. [71].

After a first period of approximately 25 years in which the first publications are produced (generically, and according to the law of the exponential growth of Price [72], they are the so-called Precursors), we move on to a second stage of Exponential Growth in which the subject of Community Tourism is on the research front (Figure 2). Given that in both databases the largest number of articles appear in 2017, the last year of the period analyzed, it is expected that this trend will be maintained at least for the next few years before moving to the last phase in the life of any discipline, the so-called linear growth phase, where growth slows down and the main objective of publications is reviewing.

On the other hand, and as shown in Figure 3, there is a strong correlation between WoS and Scopus with regard to the number of articles collected per year with R² = 0.8393.

4.2. Citations

Regarding the citation analysis, the 185 Scopus articles received a total of 3799 citations, making the citations/article ratio 20.54, expressed by the h-index = 28, of the total number of studies, 28 had 28 citations or more. The 115 articles of the WoS database obtained a total of 2384 citation and an average of 22.73 citations/article with an h-index = 22.

As with the number of articles published, the growth in the number of citations that publications received both in WoS and Scopus is constant throughout the period analyzed (Figure 4), also reaching its highest level in 2017 (397 and 639 citations respectively). 5.22% (6) of WoS articles and 4.86% (9) of Scopus obtain more than 100 citations, 4.35% (5) and 3.24% (6) respectively, between 50 and 100 citations, 22.61% (26) and 21.67 (40) between 10 and 49 and 27.83% (32) and 42.16% (78) between 1 and 9. Only 40% (46) of WoS articles and 28.11 (52) of Scopus do not receive any citations. It must be taken into account that articles published in the last 10 years have not yet shown their maximum level of citations and that access to the first studies is not always available to all, so they have a limited number of readers [73].

The correlation between the number of citations received in both databases is even stronger than that between the number of articles per year and R² = 0.9807 (Figure 5).

From the set of selected articles, the following stand out due to the number of citations received (

Table 3. Ranking of the most cited articles on Community Tourism in WoS/Scopus.

Rank	Author/s	Year	Title	WoS		Scopus
				C	C/Years	C	C/Years
1	Jamal, T.B., Getz, D. [74]	1995	Collaboration theory and community tourism planning	466	21.2	619	28.1
2	Anderek, K.L., Valentine, K.M., Knopf, R.C., Vogt, C.A. [49]	2005	Residents’ perceptions of community tourism impacts	371	30.9	398	33.2
3	Choi, H.C., Sirakaya, E. [75]	2011	Sustainability indicators for managing community tourism	234	21.3	285	25.9
4	Reed, M.G. [76]	1997	Power relations and community-based tourism planning	156	7.8	231	11.6
5	Jones, S. [77]	2005	Community-based ecotourism–The significance of social capital	128	10.7	152	12.7
6	Keogh, B. [78]	1990	Public participation in community tourism planning	109	4.0	147	5.4
7	Joppe, M. [79]	1996	Sustainable community tourism development revisited	72	3.4	120	5.7
8	Choi, H.C., Murray, I. [80]	2010	Resident attitudes toward sustainable community tourism	82	11.7	103	14.7
9	Sebele, L.S. [81]	2010	Community-based tourism ventures, benefits and challenges: Khama Rhino Sanctuary Trust, Central District, Botswana	71	10.1	79	11.3
10	Reid, D.G., Mair, H., George, W. [82]	2004	Community tourism planning: A self-assessment instrument	66	5.1	69	6.1

Source: Own elaboration.

): Collaboration theory and community tourism planning [74] with 466 citations in WoS and 619 in Scopus, Residents’ perceptions of community tourism [49] with 371 and 398 citations respectively and Sustainability indicators for managing community tourism [75] with 234 and 285. These 3 articles receive the highest average citations/years.

On the other hand, there are articles that have received a significant number of citations, but that are only indexed in one database. This is the case of a critical look at community-based tourism [83], which has a total of 129 citations in Scopus. Or A Community-Based Tourism Model: Its Conception and Use [84] with 119 citations in WoS, and despite being present in Scopus, it has only received 1 citation.

4.3. Overlap and Singularity

As we have seen, 115 articles were identified in WoS compared to 185 in Scopus, of which 91 are overlapping, that is, they are present in both databases (79.13% of WoS and 49.19% of Scopus). The remaining articles, 24 (20.87%) and 94 (50.81%) respectively, are single documents collected in only one of them (

Table 4. Singularity of the Databases.

Databases	% Single Documents		Meyer’s Index
	Articles	Journals	Articles	Journals
WoS	20.87%	25.00%	0.60	0.63
Scopus	50.81%	51.16%	0.75	0.76

Source: Own elaboration.

).

The traditional overlap (TO) % of the articles between WoS and Scopus [62], was 43.54%:

$$\%\mathrm{TO}=100\ast \left(\frac{\left|\mathrm{WoS}\cap \mathrm{Scopus}\right|}{\left|\mathrm{WoS}\cup \mathrm{Scopus}\right|}\right)=>\%\mathrm{TO}=100\ast \frac{91}{115+185-91}=>\%\mathrm{TO}=43.54\%$$

This result can be interpreted as that between WoS and Scopus there is a 43.54% similarity or a 56.46% disparity with regard to articles on Community Tourism.

To measure the percentage of coverage of WoS with respect to Scopus and vice versa, we use relative overlap [63], calculated by the expression:

$$\%\mathrm{TO}\mathrm{WoS}=100\ast \left(\frac{\left|\mathrm{WoS}\cap \mathrm{Scopus}\right|}{\mathrm{WoS}}\right)=>\%\mathrm{TO}\mathrm{WoS}=100\ast \frac{91}{115}=79.13\%$$

That is, Scopus covers 79.13% of WoS articles on Community Tourism. The TO Scopus % = 49.19%, that is, 30% less compared to the WoS overlap.

The differences between the overlap of articles can be explained by the different indexation policies followed by the databases. Although some journals are included in the two databases, it is possible that not all of their documents are transferred to each of the databases [61].

The singularity analysis of the databases was carried out using Meyer’s index [59], which includes the degree of overlap between bases, and the percentage of single documents present in each of them. The results that we can observe in Table 4 show a greater singularity of Scopus with 50.81% of articles and 51.16% of single journals and a Meyer’s index of 0.75 and 0.76 respectively.

4.4. Authors

The Ranking of the most productive authors in the area of Community Tourism present in the WoS and Scopus databases, shown in

Table 5. Ranking of the most productive authors.

R.	Name	Country	University	f	WoS				Scopus
					f	TC	C/f	h-Index	f	TC	C/f	h-Index
1	Giampiccoli, A	South Africa	Durban U. of Technólogy	14	5	15	3	2	13	49	3.77	4
2	Mtapuri, O.	Zimbabwe	U. of Zimbabwe	9	3	13	4.33	2	9	33	3.67	3
3	López-Guzmán, T.	Spain	U. de Cordoba	7	4	8	2	2	5	26	5.2	2
4	Ruiz-Ballesteros, E	Spain	U. Pablo de Olavide	6	6	80	13.3	4	6	95	15.8	4
5	Walter, P.G.	Canada	U. of British Columbia	6	3	42	14	2	6	77	12.8	4
6	Borges, O	Cape Verde	Jean Piaget U.	3	2	8	4	2	2	3	1.50	1
7	Grybovych, O.	USA	U. of Northem Iowa	3	0	0	0	0	3	5	1.67	1
8	Saayman, M	South Africa	North West U.	3	2	2	1	1	2	3	1.50	1

* R. = Rank; f = frequency (number of articles published); hi% = relative frequency; TC total number of citations received for published articles; C/f = average of citations received for published articles; h-index = Hirsch’s index. Source: Own elaboration.

, is led by Giampiccoli, A. with a total of 14 different articles between both bases, followed by Mtapuri, O. and López-Guzmán, T. with 9 and 7 articles respectively. However, Ruiz-Ballesteros, E. who has a better average citation/article since his 6 articles receive an average of 13.3 citations in Wos and 15.8 in Scopus.

Taking into account the criteria proposed by Lotka [85], authors can be classified into Small producers (authors with a single published article), Medium producers (authors with between two and nine published articles) and Large producers (authors with 10 or more published articles). As seen in Table 5, only Giampiccoli, A. would be in the category of large producers with 14 articles. 37 of them would be included in medium producers and 348 (90.16%) small producers (90.16%), causing the average productivity index per author to be 1.19.

Another bibliometric indicator that we must take into account related to the authors is the Collaboration Index, considered one of the signs of the professionalization of the research field, since articles by multiple authors have a greater impact than those by a single author, as their margin of citations is higher [86]. In this regard, 27.75% of articles (58) are signed by a single author, so the majority of articles have multiple authorship. Within these articles, those by two authors represent the highest percentage with 43.06%, which is 90 out of the total of 209. The collaboration index, expressed as the average number of authors per article is 1.85.

Together with authorship, the affiliation, both of articles and authors, is one of the determining factors for the correct identification and recovery of intellectual production in the different databases (

Table 6. Top 10 countries affiliations of the authors by the number of authors.

R.	Country	WoS U Scopus			Cites WoS				Cites Scopus
		Centers	Authors	Authorships	f	hi%	TC	h-Index	P	%	C	h-Index
1	United States	35	71	78	16	13.9	499	7	33	17.3	1010	11
2	Spain	5	22	38	13	11.3	99	5	18	9.7	133	5
3	Malaysia	11	36	37	3	2.6	7	2	12	6.5	24	3
4	South Africa	9	15	31	10	8.7	53	2	22	11.9	96	4
5	Australia	14	25	28	6	5.2	23	2	15	8.1	155	4
6	Canada	8	15	22	10	8.7	994	8	15	8.1	1683	11
7	China	8	21	21	8	7	55	3	9	4.9	81	5
8	Brazil	8	15	17	5	4.3	2	1	1	0.5	0	0
9	Thailand	9	15	15	1	0.9	0	0	9	4.9	25	2
10	United Kingdom	11	13	14	6	5.2	168	3	11	5.9	412	6

* R. = Rank; f = frequency (number of articles published); hi% = relative frequency; Q = quartil; TC total number of citations received for published articles; h-index = Hirsch’s index. Source: Own elaboration.

). In this respect, by countries and within the scientific production of articles related to Community Tourism, the United States stands out with 13.9% (16) of WoS articles and 17.3% (33) of Scopus affiliated to any of its centers. However, Canada is the country whose articles receive the highest number of citations, 994 in WoS and 1683 in Scopus, despite having only 10 and 15 indexed articles, respectively.

4.5. Journals

Of the total of 100 journals indexed between WoS and Scopus that collect articles on Community Tourism, 63 publish a single article and only 4, 10 or more (

Table 7. Ranking of the most productive journals.

R.	Title	f	hi%	WoS (JCR) 1				Scopus (SJR) 1
				f	TC	h-Index	Q	f	TC	h-Index	Q
1	Journal of Sustainable Tourism	18	8.61	14	356	9	Q1	18	452	11	Q1
2	Annals of Tourism Research	11	5.26	10	1351	9	Q1	11	1713	9	Q1
3	African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure	10	4.78	-	-	-	-	10	3	1	-
4	Tourism Management	10	4.78	9	290	7	Q1	10	665	8	Q1
5	Gazeta de Antropología	7	3.35	7	1	1	-	7	3	1	Q4
6	Pasos. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural	6	2.87	6	2	1	-	-	-	-	-
7	Current Issues in Tourism	5	2.39	3	84	2	Q2	5	164	4	Q1
8	Tourism Geographies	5	2.39	3	19	1	Q2	5	53	3	Q1

* R. = Rank; f = frequency (number of articles published); hi% = relative frequency; Q = quartil; TC total number of citations received for published articles; h-index = Hirsch’s index. ¹ Category considered for the Impact Factors (JCR/SJR): Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism except Gazeta de Antropología within the Anthropology Category. Source: Own elaboration.

).

According to the Law of Bradford [87], a small number of journals group most of the published articles related to an area, a fact that helps to identify the most used journals by researchers to disseminate their work (Figure 6). The Minimum Bradford Zone (MBZ) is defined as the number of articles equal to half of the amount that appears in the last range of the list of journals sorted by production (those that produce a single article) [88]. Once the value of MBZ (32) is calculated and from the ranking of journals ordered in descending order of productivity, the Bradford Core is made up of those journals whose sum of articles was equal to 32. In our bibliometric analysis, the MBZ is constituted only by 3 journals: Journal of Sustainable Tourism with 18 articles, Annals of Tourism Research with 11 articles and African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure with 10, the last one present only in Scopus.

In relation to the thematic areas which the journals that include articles on Community Tourism in WoS and in Scopus are classified into, the field of Social Sciences stands out both due to the number of articles and the number of citations received, collecting 62.6% (72) of WoS publications (46.4% of Journals) and 83.8% of Scopus (76.7% of Journals). It should be noted at this point that journals can belong to one or more Subject Area fields (

Table 8. Classification of articles by Subject Area.

WoS						Scopus
Area	J	f	TC	C/f	h-Index	Area	J	f	TC	C/f	h-Index
Social Sciences	26	72	2146	29.8	20	Social Sciences	66	155	3664	23.6	28
Environmental Sciences & Ecology	9	19	356	18.7	8	Business, Management and Accounting	34	105	3305	31.5	26
Science & Technology	4	18	375	20.8	10	Environmental Science	17	25	163	6.52	6
Business & Economics	7	15	397	19.8	7	Arts and Humanities	10	14	41	2.9	4
Sociology	2	11	1391	126.5	10	Economics, Econometric and Finance	9	14	22	1.6	3
Anthropology	3	9	24	2.7	2	Earth and Planetary Sciences	8	13	133	10.2	6
Geography	4	6	44	7.3	3	Agricultural and Biological Sciences	8	10	55	5.5	4
Public Administration	4	6	105	17.5	3	Energy	4	5	12	2.4	2

J = Journal; f = frequency (number of articles published); hi% = relative frequency; Q = quartil; TC total number of citations received for published articles; h-index = Hirsch’s index. Source: Own elaboration.

). By bases, in WoS, it is noteworthy that the area of Sociology, with 2 journals and 11 articles receives 1391 citations, occupying the second position of the ranking of the most cited articles, only behind Social Sciences. In Scopus, a prominent position is held by Business, Management and Accounting since it includes a total of 105 articles, 34 Journals and more than 3300 citations.

5. Conclusions

The analysis of scientific publications through bibliometric reviews represents a key element in the research process, not only as an instrument capable of analysing existing information in order to show trends, but also as a measure of its impact on the environment. In this way, it was possible to establish the development presented by this topic and the approaches followed. In this process, bibliographic databases play a key role in allowing access to most of the information. Due to the existence of differences in coverage, information provided and downloading of documents, the selection of the most appropriate database in a bibliometric study is an essential phase. Based on the results, and as a conclusion, this section provides a series of ideas on research related to the area of Community Tourism (its volume, evolution, visibility and structure) that may be useful for future studies. At the same time, it compares the coverage and overlap that two of the main databases in the market, WoS and Scopus, perform in this particular field.

The first publication of a scientific article related to Community Tourism took place at the beginning of the eighties of the last century. After a first period of uncertainty in which there were a few publications, in 2010 we entered a second phase of exponential growth, where the discipline becomes the object of study concentrating the bulk of publications and which is extended, at least, until our days. In this period, just as happened with the number of articles published, the growth in the number of citations that publications received is constant, reaching its highest level also in 2017. During the entire period, the two databases analyzed, WoS and Scopus, show a strong correlation both in the number of articles published annually and in the number of citations received. However, Scopus is the base that as a whole, collects a greater number of articles and receives a greater number of citations.

Despite the existence of this and other similarities, there are also differences in the coverage that both databases make of the Community Tourism area. With more than half of single articles, Scopus is seen as the base that best covers overlapping, at the same time, almost 80% of WoS articles. 20% in the degree of singularity of WoS gives us the measure of the amount of information that would be lost if Scopus were chosen as the only bibliographic base.

Based on the total number of articles located in WoS and Scopus, and following the criteria proposed by Lotka [85] for the classification of authors based on their productivity, only Giampiccoli, A. is within the large producer category and more than 90% in the case of small producers with a single authorship, causing the average productivity index per author to be very close to 1. Although there is a wide variety of countries of affiliation of the authors, which shows how geographically widespread this field is, the United States stands out at the forefront of research on Community Tourism, since almost 17% of the authors belong to one of its centers, preferably university. Precisely, in relation to scientific production authorship (collaboration index), the majority of articles are signed by multiple authors. Within these, articles by two authors represent the highest percentage with 43%, which places the collaboration index, expressed as the average number of authors per article, at 1.85.

Finally, and in relation to the journals where the articles are published, the core of the main journals that collect articles on Community Tourism (Bradford core) consists of only 3 publications, standing out, both by the number of articles and by the number of citations received, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, within the first quartile in the subarea of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism. Regarding the thematic classification of documents made by the databases according to the areas to which the journals where they are published belong, there is a main field of research, common for WoS and Scopus, in which articles on Community Tourism are included: Social Sciences, but given the multidisciplinary nature of Tourism, we must emphasise other areas such as Business, Management and Accounting, Sociology or Environmental Science.

These results must be contextualized within the area of Community Tourism, taking into account the limitation of defining a specific search profile and the selection of databases. On the other hand, our intention at no time has been to evaluate the quality of the selected articles—an objective that could be raised in a subsequent investigation—but rather their descriptive-quantitative analysis. In order to broaden the research, it would be interesting to extend the comparative study to other databases (EBSCOHost, Science Direct, and Google Scholar) and carry out a collaboration analysis such as those carried out in other areas of knowledge.