Global publications output on mobile learning during 2007–16: A quantitative and qualitative assessment

Abstract

The paper examines 12024 global publications on mobile learning research, as covered in Scopus database during 2007-16. The global mobile research witnessed 11.76% annual growth and citation impact of 4.08 citations per paper. The global publication and global citation share of top 10 most productive countries in mobile learning research were 64.76% and 82.16% respectively. The top 10 most productive countries individually contributed global share from 3.12% to 16.45% with largest global publication share coming from USA (16.45%), followed by China (12.13% share), U.K. (8.09%), Taiwan (6.72% share), Japan (4.99%), Germany (4.82%), Spain (4.75%), Australia (3.43%), Canada (3.38%) and India (3.12%) during 2007-16. Four out of 10 countries scored relative citation index more than the average 1.27 of all top countries: Taiwan (2.05), Canada (1.71), USA (1.68) and U.K. (1.55) during 2007-16. The national share of top 10 countries accounting for international collaborative publications in mobile learning research varied from 13.24% to 46.68% during 2007-16. Of the total output on mobile learning, Computer Science, among subjects, contributed the largest publication share (73.99%), followed by social sciences (30.32%), engineering (29.33%), mathematics (10.65%), medicine (3.77%), business, accounting & management (2.80%), arts & humanities (2.15%), decision science (2.10%), psychology (1.81%) and biochemistry, genetics & molecular biology (1.70%) during 2007-16. The top 20 most productive organizations and authors together contributed 10.80% and 5.43% global publication share and 24.32% and 17.71% global citation share respectively during 2007-16. Among the total output of 3903 papers in journal, the top 20 journals contributed 24.60% share during 2007-16. Of the total research output on mobile learning, the top 50 highly cited publications registered citations from 102 to 666 and they together received 8618 citations, with 172.36 citations per paper. These 50 highly cited papers involved the participation of 188 authors and 87 organizations.