A comparison of the characteristics of the research literatures of conventional and sustainable agriculture

A citation analysis was carried out to examine the characteristics of research literature in conventional and sustainable agriculture. The intent of the study was to determine whether there were two different literatures covering these two approaches to agricultural production or one literature covering both approaches.; One hundred research documents in conventional agriculture and one hundred research documents in sustainable agriculture published in the year 1987 were chosen at random from a search of the AGRICOLA database and the Bibliography of Agriculture. Only research documents written by United States authors in plant science, pesticides, soil science and animal science were included in the sample.; Characteristics examined were journal title dispersion, age, form, language, countries of origin and subjects of literature cited in the source documents.; Results indicated that there was a single corpus of research literature in conventional and sustainable agriculture. This included 761 journal titles cited by authors in conventional and sustainable agriculture with 220 titles cited at least once in each group. Journals were the predominant form used by the authors; mean age of cited items was 10-11.5 years; English was the predominant language and the United States was the country of origin of most of the cited items.; Entomology, crops and soils, biology, veterinary science and biochemistry were the five subjects cited most heavily in conventional agriculture. Entomology, crops and soils, botany, genetics and biology were the five subjects cited most heavily in sustainable agriculture.; It was concluded that the archival research journals accepted research articles in both conventional and sustainable agriculture. This may be the result of the growing acceptance of the philosophy of sustainable agriculture and an awareness of its importance as an alternative form of agricultural production.