Trends of Serious Games Research from 2007 to 2017: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

This study examines the tendencies of studies carried out using text mining methods under the title of “serious game”. A query was run for the “serious game” keyword in the Web of Science search engine to acquire the data. The study included publications that were scanned in the SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI and A&HCI indices between 2007-2017. Information could be acquired for a total of 1431 publications. Firstly, the obtained data were cleansed of erroneous and unnecessary information by way of a pre-process. According to the data set cleansed of errors, the total number of common citations was 12701, number of citations per publication was 8.88, whereas h-index was determined as 51. Analyses were carried out by examining all “serious games” publications on the basis of: year, author, journal/symposium name, keywords, research areas and common citation parameters. According to the results, there was a continuous increase over time in the number of publications and citations. Even though “serious games” is a topic that is frequently studied in the field of education technology studies in fields such as psychology, health care sciences, environmental sciences, ecology, public environmental occupational health, rehabilitation, business economics and psychiatry shows that “serious game” is also a popular topic for studies in different disciplines.