Bibliometric analysis of academic studies on student support systems in open and distance learning

Abstract

The aim of this research is to conduct a bibliometric analysis of educational studies utilising Student Support Systems (SSS) in Open and Distance Learning, as indexed and scanned in the Web of Science (WoS) database under SCI-Expanded, SSCI, and A&HCI. The study employs descriptive and bibliometric analysis methods including journal articles exported as a .txt file from the WoS database. The data (6.366 open-access articles between 2013 and 2023) have been mapped using the VOSviewer. The research findings indicate that the majority of educational studies involving SSS in Open and Distance Learning are constituted by articles, with the number of publications beginning to rise from 2017 and the highest number of publications occurring in 2021. The authors receiving the most shared citations in this field have been identified as Dragan Gasevic, Sanna Jarvela, Abelardo Pardo and Jonna Malmberg respectively. The countries producing the most publications related to Student Support Systems in Open and Distance Learning are, in order, the USA, Australia, the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Spain, Canada, and Turkey. From the perspective of country citation analysis, the USA has received the most citations and the institutions receiving the most citations are the University of Hong Kong in Hong Kong, Monash University in Australia, Beijing Normal University in the People's Republic of China, and the National University of Science and Technology in Taiwan. Finally, the most frequently used keywords in published studies have been found to be, in order, higher education, e-learning, online learning, and learning analytics.