Scientometric analysis and visualisation of global information literacy from higher education perspective

Abstract

Information literacy in higher education and academic research has proliferated. From 1991 to 2020, a total of 9,400 research publications on information literacy and higher education were produced steadily, as indexed in Web of Science (WoS) on 10 June 2021. This study shows the scientometric visualisation of information literacy and research in higher education using quantifiable characteristics from the publication’s dataset. The results disclose that the publication growth rate (16.84%) is highly significant for a synergistic response. Due to the productivity of authors, total of 470 papers were produced on an average per year from 1991 to 2020. Several academic publishers have allowed immediate access to their preprints and also allowed open access. The research output on Information Literacy has been published in more than 1256 journals. The results shows that most of the publications were in the domain of educational research and Library and Information Science. However, closely associated terms are health literacy, education, information literacy, higher education, and so on. Academic pivots are mainly located in Germany, USA, Australia, India, and Canada. The University of California, USA; The State University System of Florida, USA; and The University of London, UK are outstanding productive institutions. The G20 countries together produced 90% of the world’s research output on information literacy and higher education and also identified encouraging trends in collaborative research in several countries. Thus, the CI (3.757), DC (0.862), and CC (0.584) values are very substantial. Lastly, the geographic range of collaborating authors thereby visualized their linkages through co-occurrences. It analysed the influence of publications to show the most dominant contributions of global research on information literacy and higher education.