Scientific creativity: a literature review

Abstract

Abstract Much research has been done on creativity and the results can be easily found in journals, however, research on scientific creativity as a domain-specific creativity is still relatively rare. Therefore, it is necessary to study the literature to reveal the scope of research on the topic of scientific creativity. To achieve this aim, a literature review was carried out with the procedure adopted from the PRISMA statement. A total of 49 articles obtained from the IJSE, DOAJ, ERIC, IOP Science, ScienceDirect, and Springer Link websites, in the 2001-2019 period, were analyzed. The results showed that the three journals that published the most scientific creativity articles were JEP, IJSE, and CRJ. And, the three countries with the most contributing authors were Turkey, Indonesia, and Taiwan. Except for one critical review article, the research types of all articles analyzed were an empirical study, which consisted of at least five sub-topics of scientific creativity.