elocation-id: e4228
Studies on artisanal textile clothing (ATC) contribute to preserving this productive activity; this study aimed to conduct a bibliometric analysis on the topic of ATC using the Scopus digital library through the construction of an algorithm that allowed selecting documents that have addressed the subject during the last two decades and thus measure the scientific activity and identify the different study approaches from which it has been analyzed; the methodology used was divided into seven stages through which the consulted information was systematized; the metadata imported in CSV format were interpreted using the bibliometrix library of the RStudio program, version 4.4.2; among the main results, it was obtained that the scientific production on ATC in Scopus has increased by 4.7 times in the period analyzed, mostly under historical, anthropological and archaeological orientations, among others and with greater productivity within the Asian continent; likewise, greater connectivity was observed through the set of metadata via the term ‘traditional’ located in the abstract section; however, it is believed that within this segment of scientific production, it is necessary to develop research that addresses the current contexts on the ATC production, such as the value chain approach.
artisanal textiles, bibliometric, handmade, traditional clothing
Textiles, according to the American Textile History Museum (2025), are materials made using filaments obtained from fibers that, through a process of weaving and spinning manually or mechanically, materialize objects for various purposes of use, such as clothing, decoration or some daily use; nevertheless, within the artisanal sector, textiles are usually mainly related to artisanal clothing, which some authors also name as indigenous crafts (Del Carpio, 2012), textile weaving (Marceleño and Ariza, 2017) and textile crafts (Pérez and Neme, 2021).
Among others and even though the idea is easy to understand, it has been possible to corroborate from the review of the research carried out by the aforementioned authors that they allude to handmade clothing that incorporates elements of manufacture, which can vary in color, thickness, texture, composition and shape and that relies on ancestral and vernacular technologies for their manufacture, which give them the category of artisanal; therefore, it has been determined that an appropriate term to refer to them within this study is Artisanal Textile Clothing (ATC) because it establishes, comprehensively, clearly and precisely, the components that identify them.
Within the global scope, the ATC contributes to preserving cultural and traditional identities that grant particularities to the territorial space, which according to Arriaga and González (2016), has also favored the development of local and regional economies through the preservation of ancestral knowledge and techniques for its production in various countries, which makes it a cross-cutting topic of study that has been analyzed from multiple disciplines, such as the anthropology, history, ethnography, economics, and environmental sciences, among others, which have helped to broaden the panorama of the ATC from different perspectives of analysis and therefore address problems that arise from various contexts.
Based on Flores (2019), these problems are mainly linked to the harmful effects of globalization and modernity, which can be summarized in the substitution of traditional forms of production, a decrease in the succession of knowledge and formation of human capital, modifications in its distinctive value, commercial intermediations, alterations, and cultural appropriation, to mention a few.
From the relevance that the ATC has had as a research topic through different disciplines, the interest arises in developing an exploration of literature through bibliometrics, which is a discipline belonging to scientometrics that, through mathematical algorithms, generates statistical information on the scientific production stored in digital libraries, thus making it easier to select indexed documents on specific topics and measure the impact and relevance of research through metrics that show the evolution of the topic over time, trending words, and most cited authors, among other options.
This tool has been used in recent studies, such as those conducted by Tomás and Tomás (2018); Duque et al. (2021); Khan et al. (2021); Maseda et al. (2021); Salinas and García (2022); Sorzano et al. (2022), who, from their respective areas of specialty, refer to it as useful for the production of knowledge. Therefore, the research aimed to carry out a bibliometric analysis of information obtained on the subject of ATC using the Scopus digital library through the construction and use of an algorithm that allowed selecting documents that have addressed the subject during the last two decades and thus measure the scientific activity and identify the different study approaches from which it has been analyzed, which also contributes to the construction of the state of the art for the content of documents that constitute an agenda for future research.
The research process was desk-based using a methodology that consisted of seven stages: 1) keywords related to the topic of ATC were selected; 2) a digital library was chosen considering that, within its search scheme, it offered options for downloading metadata that could be entered into a data reading program, so the digital library selected was Scopus because it met the desired parameters and because of its level of specialization in the content of scientific quality information; 3) documents related to the ATC were searched for by transcribing the previously selected keywords into the search engine; likewise, the search was refined by defining a period of time of twenty years (2005-2025); the search was limited by title, keywords and abstract in any type of document indexed in Scopus; 4) once the search filters were applied, the selected documents were those considered appropriate in the topic of ATC within their content, such selection was based on reading and analyzing the abstracts; 5) at the end of the search and selection process, a list was created within Scopus to house the documents; once saved, information was configured for the download of metadata and then export them in CSV format (from Scopus to Excel); 6) in order to process the exported metadata, Bibliometrix was used, which is a processing and mathematical language tool included in the RStudio program, version 4.4.2, that facilitated the analysis of bibliometric information; and 7) within the options or indicators of analysis contained in Bibliometrix, the following sections were selected: a) productivity; b) sources; c) authors; d) affiliations; e) countries; and f) keywords. The growth rate by period in subsection ‘a’ was calculated according to the methodology of Brambila (2011), using equation 1.
Considering a 20-year analysis period (2005-2025), Figure 1 shows growth peaks in 2007, 2011, 2015, 2019, 2021 and 2023, which reflect that there was an increase in scientific production on ATC in the years indicated, corresponding to 4.7 times.
The parameter through which Bibliometrix determines the most relevant sources is productivity; that is, the number of papers that each source has published; the five sources with the highest productivity in the Scopus collection on ATC are seen in Table 1.
To determine the most relevant authors, Bibliometrix takes into account the number of documents in which an author appears; this characteristic, according to López et al. (2008), is due to components such as the networks generated between authors, which can show inaccuracy in the metrics, which, according to Miguel et al. (2007), infers that groups of authors cite each other; on the other hand, Tomás and Tomás (2018) point out that the nature of collaborative relationships can be overestimated in bibliometrics, because the logic of the algorithm generates honors for appearing in research on the same network, as can be seen in Figure 2.
According to Tomás and Tomás (2018), affiliations reflect scientific production between institutions; regarding the topic of ATC, the results show that the production generated in academic spaces such as universities generates a greater nucleus of collaborations, particularly in the Asian continent; Table 2 presents the main university institutions that, during the last five years, have strengthened a collaboration scheme to produce scientific information about ATC.
Figure 3 shows the geographical distribution of scientific production on ATC, where ten main countries stand out, among which China shows a higher level of scientific production on ATC with a total of 133 documents, a fact that Molero (2024) relates to the centuries of history in the production of textiles and their distribution through trade.
For its part, the information that India produces on ATC is reflected in 77 identified documents; however, according to Vásquez (2021), there is currently a debate about the industrial overproduction of clothing, which broadens the analysis by considering problems such as imitation or plagiarism, as well as negative environmental and social impacts. Other notable countries are Indonesia (55), the United States of America (43), Kazakhstan (35), the United Kingdom (28), Turkey (17), Canada (16), France (16) and Mexico (15); the latter with a large productive wealth on ATC with problems similar to those described in China and India, such as plagiarism and industrial imitation.
According to Flores (2023), the use of words in scientific production contributes to generating a system for searching, coding, storing, and retrieving documents through concurrence. For the topic of ATC, it was observed that a greater number of documents are related by the use of the word ‘traditional’, particularly located within the abstract, as opposed to sections such as title and keywords, as can be seen in Figure 4; likewise, the co-occurrence network is also shown in Figure 5, which represents the relationships generated within the dataset that show greater connectivity in the information on ATC, through the term ‘traditional’.
The thematic evolution within the scientific production on ATC shows variation over time, which was corroborated by selecting the most cited documents worldwide during the established period of time (2005-2025), where there was a compendium of studies in the Scopus collection that mostly address ATC from historical, anthropological, and archaeological approaches; for example, Hendon (2006) locates her object of study in Mesoamerica, as do authors such as Cohen (2007); Cohen et al. (2011); Theodossopoulos (2012); García and Vinebaum (2016); Franco et al. (2019); Méndez and Ávila (2019); Antaki and Medvedev (2021); O’Connell (2021); Raas (2022); Tacchetti et al. (2023); Moya et al. (2024); Mondragón (2024).
Nonetheless, within the aforementioned approaches, Asian production predominates through the Journal of Silk source, which has generated constant productivity during the established period; in the work of authors such as Xue et al. (2022); Wang et al. (2023); Yan and Deng (2024), the historical context of the textile trade is addressed; other authors such as Song et al. (2023) study the ancient trades and techniques for the production of ATC.
Some authors such as Affinito et al. (2017); Ma et al. (2019); Fan and Zhou (2020) relate ATC to issues in fashion and design, under approaches that promote sustainability, which is also the case for Granger et al. (2007), who establish principles of reuse and exploitation of biotic resources; finally, technological innovation becomes relevant through the analysis of industrial production in studies carried out mainly by Deshpande et al. (2021); Rajput and Aneja (2021); Zhang (2022).
The conducted work made it possible to identify a 4.7-fold increase in production during the established period (2005-2025), during which there is an abundance of studies under historical, anthropological and archaeological orientations and to a lesser extent in areas such as design, sustainability, technology, innovation and socioeconomics; it is suggested that future studies consider approaches that lean towards the analysis of the productive, organizational and trade processes of artisans, such as the value chain approach, from which it will be possible to expand the information on the current problems and needs of those who subsist through the production of ATC to continue contributing to the construction of their analysis and preservation.
Devi, M. R; Poornima, N. and Guptan, P. S. 2007. Bamboo the natural, green and eco-friendly new-type textile material of the 21st century. Journal of the Textile Association. 67(5):221-224. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283837761-Bamboo---The-natural-green-and-eco-friendly-new-type-textile-material-of-the-21st-century.
López, G. Á. A.; Nuñez-Fernández, C.; Vicente-Herrero, M. T.; Monroy-Fuenmayor, M. N.; Sarasibar-Ezcurra, H. y Tejedo-Benedicto, E. 2008. Análisis bibliométrico de la productividad científica de los artículos originales relacionados con salud laboral publicados por diferentes revistas españolas entre los años 1997 y 2006. Medicina Balear. 23(1):17-24. https://portalcientifico.universidadeuropea.com/documentos/63f6c2bf3dae6d15e23a8aca.
