Metaverse Shape of Your Life for Future: A bibliometric snapshot

TL;DR

This bibliometric study analyzes the evolution, key contributors, and research trends in metaverse technology from 1990 to 2021, highlighting its growing interest in virtual reality, augmented reality, education, and digital marketing.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive bibliometric overview of metaverse research, identifying key journals, institutions, researchers, and topics over three decades.

Findings

Research interest peaked recently with virtual and augmented reality focus.

Few studies exist on the historical development of the metaverse.

The metaverse is expected to impact many life areas within 15-20 years.

Abstract

The metaverse was first introduced in 1992. Many people saw Metaverse as a new word but the concept of Metaverse is not a new term. However, Zuckerberg's press release drew all the attention to the Metaverse. This study presents a bibliometric evaluation of metaverse technology, which has been discussed in the literature since the nineties. A field study is carried out especially for the metaverse, which is a new and trendy subject. In this way, descriptive information is presented on journals, institutions, prominent researchers, and countries in the field, as well as extra evaluation on the prominent topics in the field and researchers with heavy citations. In our study, which was carried out by extracting the data of all documents between the years 1990-2021 from the Web of Science database, it was seen that there were few studies in the literature in the historical process for the metaverse, whose popularity has reached its peak in recent months. In addition, it is seen that the subject is handled intensively with virtual reality and augmented reality technologies, and the education sector and digital marketing fields show interest in the field. Metaverse will probably have entered many areas of our lives in the next 15-20 years, shape our lives by taking advantage of the opportunities of developing technology.