Bibliometric Analysis of Studies on The Concept of "Metaverse"

Due to the importance of using metaverse technology in various fields, it is essential to examine published works on this subject. This study aims to reveal the current status and trends of the field by reviewing works that include the concept of "metaverse" through the Web of Science (WoS) database with bibliometric analysis techniques. Data were gathered from the WoS database using the bibliometric analysis method within the framework of a quantitative research design. The VOSviewer program was used to process the data. There were 5334 results for the keyword search "metaverse" in Web of Science. The obtained data were examined through author, citation, keyword, country, and institution analyses. When the publication years of works related to the concept of "metaverse" were examined, the examination determined that the highest concentration was in 2023 and 2024, and the names that created the most works were Dusit Niyato (63), Zehui Xiong (36), and Jiawen Kang (35). In terms of the distribution of the most frequently cited works on the metaverse by country, it was determined that the People's Republic of China was the leader (13006 citations), followed by the United States (10516 citations) and South Korea (6140 citations). The most frequently cited institution was the Chinese Academy of Sciences (1756 citations). It was concluded that the most frequently cited countries and institutions on the metaverse were Asian. The results can be compared by analyses similar to those of other programs performing bibliometric analysis.