A bibliometric analysis of publications on ChatGPT in education: Research patterns and topics

Abstract

This paper aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis and a comprehensive overview of publications on ChatGPT in educational research. This research also aimed to present the bibliometric results to interpret the research patterns and themes of the application of ChatGPT in educational research. The researchers used the VOSviewer program to conduct a bibliometric analysis and identify research patterns and topics in publications indexed in the Scopus database. For this purpose, the researchers used the Scopus database to find related publications. After applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, they found 82 publications and analyzed them using the bibliometric method. This study showed that researchers from 42 countries examined various topics, including academic writing, artificial intelligence’s (AI) potential, and benefits, using ChatGPT in research, exploring best practices, and reviewing AI. The keyword analysis results showed that five clusters emerged from the current studies on ChatGPT in education research. These results showed that researchers focused on understanding the use of ChatGPT in medical and nursing education, generative AI’s ethical dimensions, the effects of ChatGPT on educational outcomes, large language models and medical education, and ChatGPT and AI. In general, the use of ChatGPT in educational contexts and research is frequently discussed in the publications analyzed in this study. In addition, medical and nursing education was the most studied of the many research studies. Based on the obtained results, recommendations for further studies are drawn.