Bibliometrics and the study of academic knowledge circulation

Quantitative science studies have been used to facilitate the systematic analysis of the digital tide of literature over the last few decades. This chapter reviews two applications related to science mapping of scholarly communication. Science mapping includes visualisations to analyse potential relationships among people, organisations and concepts. Here, we review two methods: (a) co-authorship: to unveil the scientific connections of actors in the field; (b) and co-word analysis: to reveal the main themes and topics and their cognitive structure. We also present an exploratory case of study for the knowledge circulation literature. Based on a sample of 3,900+ documents published between 1996 and 2021, we found a global average annual growth of the literature of approximately 17 per cent, particularly since 2009. We then segmented the science mapping analysis into two periods: 1996–2008 and 2009–21 to track changes over time. Co-authorship analysis showed a growing institutional collaboration between periods, first led by USA–Asia Pacific institutions, then by the UK and Canada. However, the co-word analysis showed consistency between periods of the conceptual communities concerning knowledge management via Information Technology (IT) and miscellaneous in the history of medicine and research/methodologies. Relevant conceptual communities in the first period were displaced by communities such as e-learning and education economics; research methods in public policy and sustainability sciences and environmental policy. Beginners, seasoned scholars and other actors could use our findings to identify key institutions and topics in the knowledge circulation research landscape.