Categorization of an emerging discipline in the world publication system (SCOPUS): E-learning

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that e-learning forms a cohesive and distinct scientific community, justifying its recognition as a separate thematic category in global publication systems, which can enhance research visibility and development.

Contribution

It provides bibliometric evidence supporting the classification of e-learning as an independent discipline in scientific publication databases.

Findings

219 highly interrelated publications identified

E-learning spans social sciences, computer science, and health

Supports establishing e-learning as a distinct publication category

Abstract

E-learning has been continuously present in current educational discourse, thanks to technological advances, learning methodologies and public or organizational policies, among other factors. However, despite its boom and dominance in various subject areas, this thematic does not yet exist in the world system of publications. Therefore, works in this thematic end up being published under related categories, particularly Education or categories within subject area Computer Science, thus fragmenting and make invisible the existing knowledge. This work is based on the hypothesis that the scientific communication of e-learning has a sufficient degree of cohesion to be considered as a thematic category in itself. From a bibliometric approach, its scientific production was analyzed, obtaining the bibliographic data of SCOPUS and SCImago, selecting its main descriptors and generating visualizations through VOSViewer with the mapping overlay technique, to represent its set and proximity. As a result, it was determined that a set of 219 publications show a high bibliometric interrelation among its articles and these are presented transversely between the social sciences, computer science and health. This set serves as a channel of scientific communication and structure of knowledge on the thematic and can therefore be considered as the basis for establishing the "e-learning" thematic category in the world system of scientific publications, contributing to the consolidation of the discipline, to its access and development by researchers.