Research profiles of Australian computing education authors: A scientometric analysis

Abstract

Computing education (CE) is a growing, but well-established field of research. However, relatively little is known about the research profiles of CE researchers: whether they tend to publish more educational or non-educational papers and when during their career they tend to commence CE research. Using a scientometric approach and data from Scopus, 189 CE authors from Australia were identified who had published in the field between 2018 and 2021. Their research publication history was then retrieved, and each publication was classified as educational or non-educational using a computer aided approach. It was found that CE researchers have diverse research profiles; well established researchers tended to have fewer educational papers, new researchers tend to have more educational papers, and that it is becoming more common to start a research career doing CE research. This has implications for how the research field may be viewed by university computing departments.