Research on social sciences and humanities: a European perspective based on science mapping and bibliometrics

This paper sheds light on how social sciences and humanities (SHH) have been approached as a topic in the academic literature over the last 50 years, with specifically a European perspective. We applied science mapping and bibliometrics as a methodology that has shown its potential in studies mapping the higher education literature. We conducted a systematic search in Web of Science (WoS), one of the most commonly used academic literature databases to map and explore the breadth of the literature on SSH across academic disciplines in the time span 1977–2024. The analysis included 413 peer-reviewed articles after screening. Results present the European academic community working topically on SSH to be fragmented in various aspects. Publications were distributed over a broad array of journals, connected through various citation clusters and unevenly connected across national contexts. Furthermore, articles were not necessarily presented as higher education research but on majority were published in journals covering scientomretrics, research assessment and evaluation. Our analysis revealed both stability and notable changes over time in terms of the concepts covered in the publications. Outstanding conceptual foci on research evaluation, research output, assessment, data production and the humanities remained stable, albeit with changes in their relative relevance. The findings also demonstrate an emergent thematic focus on the SSH as standalone category in recent years. Given calls for the SSH to demonstrate their relevance for the twenty-first century University, this paper points out the necessity for a more integrated perspective across disciplinary boundaries in future research.