The Impact of COVID-19 on Educational Research: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the major challenges generated in education, thousands of scientific papers have been published, contributing to the establishment of a distinct research line in the field. This study provides a bibliometric overview of the educational publications linked to COVID-19 indexed by the Web of Science Core Collection for the years 2020 and 2021. The findings show a growing interest of researchers in education in this area. The proportion of articles among the types of documents proved to be dominant. Journals dedicated to chemistry and medical education stood out for the high number of pandemic-related papers. Higher education has been an intensively explored area during the pandemic. The USA and its universities were the most productive in publishing studies on COVID-19 in education. Our study indicated research themes that have been explored by the researchers, such as online learning in different educational settings, curriculum and instructional approaches in the online learning setting, and the psychological consequences of COVID-19 on the educational actors. The implications of the pandemic on potential research avenues for education research were also emphasized.