A Bibliometric Analysis on Informal Education Research Developments

Abstract

This study analyses the trend in informal and family education research from 2013-2023. The study aims to explore: (1) the development of the number of international publications derived from the Scopus database in 2013-2023; (2) core journals in international publications; (3) researchers’ productivity; (4) the development of publications based on the subject/field; (5) the development of research publications based on keywords (Co-word) and based on authors (Co-author). The data were collected by browsing through Scopus using the following keywords; informal, education, and family. The search explores categories, article titles, abstracts, and keywords within the time frame of 2013-2023. The data of the number of publications per year, authors, and subjects were analysed using Microsoft Excel 2019. Meanwhile, the development of publications was analysed using the VosViewer application. The results showed that (1) the highest publication was found in 2022, with 197 publications (16.58%); (2) PLOS One Journal was the most productive publication (19 publications); (3) the institution with the miNost affiliations was the University of Toronto with 23 publications; (4) the United States (US) contributed the most with 397 publications; (5) the most productive author was Zimmerman, H.T. (10 publications); (6) the most frequent subject was social science (546 publications); (7) the research development in this field is categorized into 8 clusters based on co-word analysis