Unveiling the Thematic Landscape of Cultural Studies Through Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Introduction: the sociology of knowledge has been a source of interest for researchers. The implication of bibliometrics as a science for the construction of scientific knowledge in the different branches of knowledge, especially the social sciences, occupies an important center.Objective: characterize the research published in Scopus referring to cultural studies.Method: a bibliometric analysis was carried out on the articles referring to cultural studies published in the period 2018 – 2023 in journals subscribed to the Scopus database. The SciVal tool was used to collect the information. Bibliometric indicators were analyzed. Descriptive statistics were applied.Results: A total of 169434 documents were found in the thematic category Cultural Studies, of which 37.9% were open access, with a trend of increasing scientific production. In the period from 2018 to 2022, researchers worldwide have contributed 3674 topics on Cultural Studies. A marked concentration of these topics was observed in the area of Social Sciences and Psychology, which is to be expected if one takes into account that these are prominent areas due to their relevance in the study of human interaction and social behavior. The most productive countries were the United States, United Kingdom, Russia, Spain and Australia. On the other hand, with respect to collaboration indicators, 70.5% of the papers had no collaboration and only 6.9% of the studies had international collaboration, which is to be expected given that cultural studies are mostly developed in a local or regional context.Conclusions: scientific production in matters of cultural studies showed gradual growth in correspondence with topics of interest to the scientific community. The focus of the studies was located on high-impact journals in correlation with the behavior of the citations received. At the same time, the collaboration was characterized by its institutional nature.