Bibliometric analysis of augmented reality research in educational sciences

Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine the distribution of articles on augmented reality in the WOS database in the field of educational sciences by years, keywords and active concepts, active countries, active countries by total number of citations, active countries by citation averages, active authors, active authors by local citation rankings, active researches by global citation rankings, active journals by number of articles, active institutions, country-author-keyword network and popular topics by years. The study used bibliometric analysis, which is one of the quantitative approaches. The data set consisted of 1759 augmented reality articles in the field of educational sciences in the WOS database between 1999 and 1 September 2024. The "Biblioshiny" package program in the "R" programming language was used to analyse the data. The results of the research indicate that the annual growth rate for articles in the field of educational sciences utilizing augmented reality is 24%. The most common keywords are education, augmented reality, students, technology, system, design, science, challenges, performance and virtual reality. The countries with the highest levels of activity in this field are China, the USA, Spain, Turkey, Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Serbia, Korea and Japan. China, the USA and Spain are in the first three places in the citation ranking of the countries. According to the citation averages, the ranking is as follows: It was determined that Hwang GJ is the most influential author, Chang HY is the most cited author in the local context, and Wu HK is the most cited author globally. The most influential journal is "Education and Information Technologies," and the most influential institution is National Taiwan Normal University. Popular research topics in augmented reality for 2024 include laboratory skills, virtual reality, and K-12 concepts.