A bibliometric review of research on academic engagement, 1978–2021

Abstract

For centuries, the collaboration between higher education and industry (or academic engagement) has become an exciting topic for all related stakeholders, such as researchers, policymakers, or entrepreneurs. Nonetheless, there has yet to be any comprehensive understanding of the extant literature on this topic. Motivated by this gap, this study applies the bibliometric method to review all related documents of academic engagement indexed in the Scopus database between 1978 and 2021. The results showed that the period from 2018 to 2021 identified itself as a golden era with the palpable attention of scholars who contributed to approximately 80% of the related topic. The countries ranked in the top five with dominant publications include the US, the UK, Spain, Italy and Germany. The co-word analysis also recognized technology transfer, research and development, and entrepreneurial university and university-industry relations as the key topics focused on academic engagement works of literature.