Astrobiology, Education and UNESCO Global Geoparks: Exploring Epistemic Invisibility in Scientific Databases through a Comparative Bibliometric Study

Abstract

This study examines the epistemic visibility of educational research at the intersection of astrobiology, science education and UNESCO Global Geoparks (UGGps) from a critical environmental education perspective. Using a comparative bibliometric analysis of Web of Science and Google Scholar, it reveals marked disparities in the indexing and accessibility of publications on these themes. While Google Scholar retrieved 113 documents linking education, astrobiology and geoparks, Web of Science returned none. Consequently, we broadened the search to include alternative conceptual associations such as “Geopark and Planetary Analogue” and “Geopark and Education”. The results indicate that educational practices and discourses in this field remain largely invisible in dominant academic repositories, despite growing interest and innovative applications in informal science learning contexts. These findings highlight the need to broaden visibility criteria in academic research and to question the epistemological assumptions of indexing systems, contributing to wider debates on epistemic environmental justice and knowledge pluralism in science education.