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Sheep red blood cells (SRBC) are commonly employed by scientists to address humoral immune responses in poultry. While SRBC are closely related to the study of humoral immunity in poultry, the initial purpose of much research did not focus on the mechanisms involved. Here, we provide a qualitative approach and utilize scientometric techniques, including trend analyses, scientific collaborations and mapping, and word co-occurrence evaluations, to summarize the role of SRBC in the poultry studies. First, a search strategy on Web of Science (WoS) was conducted to find publications that included SRBC in the poultry studies. Publications were partitioned into 4 categories: nutrition, genetics, microbiology, and physiology. For scientometric evaluation, scientific maps and networks were produced to clarify the occurrence of SRBC in the poultry studies. Data used included 702 publications over a period of 50 y (1968-2018) that were retrieved from the WoS database. About 95% of the publications were published in English language. Indigenous, experimental, and commercial chickens, quail, and medicinal plants field/topics were the main subjects of publications. In recent years, authors have used SRBC to study humoral immune response as a secondary aim of their research, especially when poultry production/performance was studied. This was especially the case in recent decades for studies in poultry nutrition. Analysis of keywords co-occurrence showed that the phrase SRBC mostly occurred with chickens, immune response, and especially with broilers. Moreover, the 'medicinal plants' are becoming important especially for research on broilers and the reduced use of antibiotics in feed. Consequently, in addition to studying the medicinal plants, finding antibiotic replacements, and/or growth performance in the birds, humoral immunity is suggested to be investigated using SRBC. Moreover, interdisciplinary studies with the cooperation of scientists from agriculture, veterinary, immunology, biochemistry and molecular biology, and toxicology will develop in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To have a better contribution to the poultry production community, the Poultry Science Association founded journals including Poultry Science (PS) at 1921. Now, after 100 yr of publishing, PS ranks between the top 10 journals in the category of "agriculture, dairy, and animal science". One hundred years after publishing the first paper in PS, the poultry industry has been completely revolutionized. Hence, it will be interesting to establish scientometrics study of the PS development during the last century. Therefore, based on findings of the current study, among countries/authors' collaborations, future research fronts, and possibility of hot topics in the coming years may be predictable. Accordingly, a total of 22,451 articles were retrieved. For content analyses, according to the PS categorization for subject areas, 14 different subject areas were developed, including "behavior, breeding and quantitative genetics, education and extension, health and welfare, immunology, management and environment, metabolism and nutrition, microbiology and virology, modeling, molecular biology, physiology and anatomy, production, products, processing and marketing, and reproduction". Considering the 100-yr of PS, the most frequent subject area was "nutrition and metabolism" (14,109 articles), and "modeling" (1,114 articles) attracted less scholarly attention. However, considering the last decade (2011–2020), the most important subject area was "molecular biology" (1,420 of 2,466 articles; 57.58%), followed by "modeling" (544 of 1,144 articles; 48.88%). Moreover, the most frequent poultry species/strains were broilers (retrieved in 6,156 articles), followed by laying hens, turkeys, and quail. Considering collaboration of countries and researchers, it can be said that a total number of 108 countries contributed to PS, with the most prolific country being United States (with 9,421 articles; 43.16%), followed by China, Canada, the Netherlands, and Japan. Among the authors, Harms RH (287 articles), and Siegel PB (208) were the most prolific authors, and Siegel PB and Dunnington EA (71 articles) had more collaborations. To study keyword trends, including 3 time periods broilers was the central co-occurrent keyword, while the importance of chickens and turkeys declined during the time. Salmonella spp. was a constant representative of poultry microbiology during 100 yr. While "nutrition and metabolism" was the most important subject area, nutrition-related keywords (major items) were not concentrated and co-occurred with a variety of keywords from different subject areas. While "molecular biology" ranked first over the past decade, the importance of "nutrition and metabolism" should not be ignored. In fact, in recent years, molecular basis of the nutrition has been studied. In big-data era and due to developing the molecular biology technologies, it seems that using mathematical modeling and computational methodologies will increase and probably remains as one of the most attractive research areas for scientists at least in the upcoming future decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]