The database also provided information for the Grainger and Garcia [51] study, which developed a methodology to analyze the major phases (i.e.

undeveloped, NVP-BGJ398 in vitro developing, mature and senescent phases) of fishery developments on the basis of capture data. The same approach has been later applied to analyze development phases at the national (Cuba [52]) and regional levels (Eastern Central Atlantic [53]). According to their biological characteristics, the “oceanic” species for which statistics are available in the FAO database were identified and further subdivided into “epipelagic” and “deep-water” [54]. This species classification was used to quantify high seas catches and their trends [34], [49], [55] and [56], although coincidence between catches in the high seas and those beyond the continental shelf is coarse in some areas.

It is interesting to note that the number of species items classified as deep-water more than doubled between the 1999 and 2006 releases of the database, probably reflecting mostly a greater global attention to monitoring deep-water fishing rather than increased fishing activities. Citation analyses performed for FishBase [57] and the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries [58] reported that both had been cited more than 500 times, enrolling them to the restricted group of highly-cited items. JAK inhibitor In fact, it was estimated that among the 20 million items published between 1900 and 2005 that have been cited at least once, only about 21,400 were cited more than 500 times representing 0.11% of the total [59]. Similar research conducted for the FAO capture database found out that also this item should be added to the exclusive club. The FAO capture database is cited in an array of different manners Fossariinae and the bibliographic database Scopus 22 was searched using 15 word combinations referring to ‘FAO capture database’, ‘FAO Yearbook of Fishery Statistics’, ‘Fishstat software’, etc. After removing duplicates and citations referring to the FAO aquaculture or fishery trade databases, it resulted

that a total of 622 articles from refereed journals cited the FAO capture database between 1996 and mid-June 2011. However, the number of scientific papers that have been analyzing data extracted from the FAO capture database is higher, as it was noted that several articles either largely based on data from the database (e.g. [50], [60], [61] and [62]) or discussing its content (e.g. [17], [18] and [63]) did not cite it in the references section. Analysis of citations showed that a peak was reached in 2009 and that a 40% average of the articles are by authors affiliated to European institutions followed by Asian and North American authors (Fig. 4). The number of citations in 2010 plus those already available for 2011 exceeded that for 2009 in all continents with the exception of North America.