What Do We Know About Metaverse? Insights for Future Studies Based on Bibliometric Analysis

ABSTRACT

Metaverse is a technology which allow users to “experience” a digital universe and includes several components like augmented and virtual reality. Researchers who wish to research the field may not know where to start or the key features of the field. Thus, the present study aims to discuss the general and social, conceptual, and intellectual structures of the field for future researchers on metaverse. For this purpose, the general structure, scientific maps, and socio-intellectual structure of the field were investigated. Then, recommendations are presented for future researchers by bibliometric analysis results. In the study, the abstracts and keywords in publications indexed in the Scopus database and Web of Science database were reviewed. After the data collected from 439 publications were cleaned and combined, 328 documents were analyzed using R. The performance analysis revealed that the most productive writer in the field was Ayiter E., the most influential writer was Bourlakis M., the journal with the most publications was “The Journal of the Association for Information Systems”, and the most cited study was “Avatars, People, and Virtual Worlds: Foundations for Research in Metaverses” published in that journal. The examination of the intellectual, social and conceptual framework within the field unveiled predominant associations of metaverse with keywords such as virtual, second life, augmented reality, avatar, virtual world, and virtual reality. The most frequent collaborations were between Korea, Japan and the United States on second life and e-learning.