A Scientometric Analysis of Forty-Three Years of Research in Social Support in Education (1977-2020)

This scientometric study examines the overall research trends, publication and citation structures, authorship and collaboration patterns, bibliographic coupling, and productivity patterns in the field of social support in education. Bibliometric data consisting of 545 documents was retrieved from the Scopus database during a period of 43 years (1977-2020) on 1 January 2021. Data analysis was performed using various scientometric software including MS Excel, VOS Viewer, Biblioshiny, CiteSpace and ScientoPy. The results of the study revealed that the first publication on this topic appeared in 1977, however, the major increase was observed during 2017-2020, whereas the maximum number of publications (N = 57) in a single year was published in the year 2020. Similarly, the highest number of citations (n = 1002) were observed in the year 1995 with an average of 334 citations per document. The most productive countries were the United States (N = 194), the United Kingdom (N = 56), and Australia (N = 50 publications). Results further indicated that more than 50.7% of the research in the social support area was done in medicine. Overall, the findings of the study reveal that most of the research in the aforementioned field originated from the developed countries which can be related to the developments in the medical field. The study indicates the importance of social support in the educational context due to an increased trend of inclusion and diversity in the education field. This research is the first bibliometric study in the field of social support in education.