## 3 Bibliometric Analysis  
A Bibliometric analysis is a widely used quantitative tool for assessing the impact and relevance of scientific publications. Its use has grown due to its ability to identify emerging trends, map the structure of a research field, and understand collaboration networks among researchers [15]. Table 1 presents a bibliographic overview of the topic of emerging technologies in food drying, based on 52 research articles published between 2014 and 2024. Regarding authorship, 251 authors contributed to this topic, with an average of 5.23 authors per document and an international co-authorship rate of 15.38%. These data highlight the level of collaboration both among authors from the same country and across different countries,all focused on the application of emerging technologies in food drying. A noteworthy point is the high average number of citations per document, calculated at 24.02, which demonstrates the significant impact of these studies within the academic community, often serving as reference works for future research in this field. Among the 52 publications, Figure 2 shows the annual distribution. In 2024, eleven papers on the topic of emerging technologies in food drying were published, followed by nine papers in 2023 and eight in 2021. This upward trend in the past two years underscores the growing importance and research interest in this area. The global geographical distribution of authors indicates that Brazil has the highest number of contributors (fourteen) (Figure 3), followed by China, France, Greece, and Italy with five authors each, Mexico and Poland with four each, and Canada, India, Spain, the United States, and Vietnam with three each. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c} \hline \hline
**Description** & **Results** \\ \hline Documents & 52 \\ Time span & 2014–2024 \\ Authors & 251 \\ Co-authors per document & 5.23 \\ International co-authorship (\%) & 15.38 \\ Average document age (years) & 4.25 \\ Average citations per document & 24.02 \\ References & 3349 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: Overview of bibliometric statistics for studies on emerging technologies in food drying. Figure 2: The annual scientific production on emerging drying technologies (2014–2024). The x-axis of the figure represents the year of publication, while the y-axis indicates the number of publications in that year. Analyzing the country of the corresponding author in relation to the co-authors (Figure 4), it is observed that Brazilian corresponding authors tend to collaborate predominantly with researchers from the same country (five papers), and in two papers there was international collaboration. A similar pattern is seen in publications from Mexico, with three national-only collaborations and one involving foreign authors. Chinese papers show a balance between publications authored solely by nationals (two) and those involving international collaboration (two). Publications from Canada,  
Figure 4: The nationality of corresponding authors by country. The chart shows the number of publications per country, distinguishing between national (SCP) and international (MCP) collaborations. Figure 3: Global distribution of scientific output on emerging drying technologies (2014-2024). Countries in lighter shades contributed fewer studies (1–4), while gray indicates no publications. Greece, Argentina, Chile, India, Iran, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, the United States, and Belgium included only authors from their respective countries. Analyzing the most relevant keywords in the publications (Figure 5), the term \"emerging technologies\" has the highest frequency and is therefore highlighted at the center of the network. The term \"drying\" shows the second highest frequency. The red cluster encompasses topics related to processing and extraction technologies, as indicated by keywords such as osmotic dehydration, microwaves, heating, and assisted extraction.