An analysis of peer-reviewed publications on open educational practices (Oep) from 2007 to 2020: A bibliometric mapping analysis

Abstract

This study undertook a bibliometric mapping analysis of research papers on Open Educational Practices (OEP) in the Web of Science and Scopus databases. This study functions as a guide for new research, serving to identify trends in the OEP field and compare the existing research so as to identify gaps and promising future paths. A total of 635 studies were obtained; however, only 156 were finally selected for the analysis. VOSviewer software was used to identify the most fre-quently used keywords and terms in the abstracts and titles. This software was also used to analyse the studies for co-authorship and citations. The findings showed that research on OEP started in 2007 and focused on higher education, including open and distance higher education. Most of the OEP studies were published in English as journal articles, in particular, many were published in Distance Education, International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, and Open Praxis. The United Kingdom, Spain, and Australia were the top contributors to the OEP literature. The analysis of keywords and terms in the titles and abstracts revealed that current OEP trends covered only open pedagogy and open collaboration, suggesting a need for more research on other trends, such as open assessment, open data, and open science. The results also suggested that future research needs to focus more on inclusive open educational practices that accommodate students with disabilities.