https://doi.org/10.21009/JISAE

JISAE (Journal of Indonesian Student Assessment and Evaluation)

ISSN : P-ISSN: 2442-4919│E-ISSN: 2597-8934
Vol 9 No 1 (2023)

Website : http://journal.unj.ac.id/unj/index.php/jisae

A SCIENTOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE
DEVELOPMENT: R BIBLIOSHINY

Septian Cahya Azhari1,
Siliwangi University

Siti Fadjarajani2,
Siliwangi University

Muhamad Ferdi Firmansyah3,

Siliwangi University

Tita Yuniarti4,
Siliwangi University

ABSTRACT
The development of research in the field of education
experiences exponential growth every year. This study aims
to analyze the development of research on academic
performance from 2010-2022. A total of 1906 articles indexed
by the PubMed database were analyzed with a scientometric
qualitative approach with bibliometric R bibliophily and
VosViewer R tools. The results showed a significant
development of research on the object of study of academic
performance, especially in 2020-2022. From the analysis of
several articles, this development was primarily influenced by
the covid-19 pandemic. Some authors are categorized as
productive writers on this theme, in most of them are from
China. The potential for future research by looking at the
research keywords of bibliometric analysis results in cluster 1,
such as academic functioning, school performance,
educational attainment, socioeconomic status, sleep duration,
and parental education, is about increasing "student academic
performance" which is supported by "school performance",
"parental education" and "socioeconomic" families. This
research helps compile study topics regarding academic
performance and find novelty in subsequent research.

Keywords: Academic Performance, Scientometric Analysis,
R Biblioshiny.

Address for Correspondence:
1,2Department of Geography Education. Jl. Siliwangi

no.24, Kahuripan, Tawang District, Tasikmalaya City,

46115, Indonesia.

3Department of Economics Development. Jl. Siliwangi

no.24, Kahuripan, Tawang District, Tasikmalaya City,

46115, Indonesia.

4Department of Mathematics Education. Jl. Siliwangi

no.24, Kahuripan, Tawang District, Tasikmalaya City,

46115, Indonesia.

*sitifadjarajani@unsil.ac.id

INTRODUCTION
The development of research studies in education today is developing very

quickly, considering that education is the most crucial part of human life to produce a
superior civilization printed in the history of humanity's future (Azhari et al., 2022).
Research in the field of education is divided into several sub-fields that are the focus
of researchers' studies. However, the research aims to improve quality and provide
the latest innovations integrated with technological and scientific developments.
Research studies include curriculum studies, educational policies, educational
psychology, learning media and other fields.

The object of study that is of much concern to researchers of which is academic
performance, the efforts made by researchers in this study are to understand the
factors that can affect the performance of academic performance (Khan et al., 2020;
Waheed et al., 2020), this shows the importance of academic performance studies in
producing products from superior education. His study combines academic
performance with educational psychology, such as family support variables, learning
motivation, self-regulated learning, and self-efficacy. The purpose of the study in
academic performance is to improve and improve student achievement in the learning

http://journal.unj.ac.id/unj/index.php/jisae
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45 |JISAE (Journal of Indonesian Student Assessment and Evaluation) |Volume 9 Number 1

process at school, which includes cognitive, affective and psychomotor assessment of
students. However, some researchers reveal that academic performance is an
academic performance resulting from exam results.

The more research on academic performance, researchers are increasingly
discovering many new things, including academic performance being influenced by
internal and external aspects (Helal et al., 2018). Some studies that examine academic
performance include (Beltrán-Velasco et al., 2021), which examines the effects of
perceptual, psychological and habitual factors on academic performance; the result of
this study is that students who have high academic performance are characterized by
a higher level of suitability and are supported by other health factors such as diet,
exercise and body mass.

Research using scientometric analysis in academic performance studies has
not been done. So, this is the first research in the field of education using scientometric
analysis, especially in academic performance studies. Previous studies with the type
of case study have shown promising results in finding research gaps and projections
that will occur in the future so that they are appropriate when mapped using
scientometric analysis.

The research conducted by (Shi & Qu, 2021a) analyzed the health of student
psychology as a mediating variable to determine how students' cognitive abilities affect
academic performance and abstract thinking ability. The results of his research show
that students' cognitive abilities influence improving academic performance mediated
by student psychological health. In addition, research conducted by the same
researcher (Shi & Qu, 2021b) analyzing cognitive ability and self-control towards
increasing academic performance, with the results of the study showing that cognitive
ability correlates with increased academic performance and self-regulation plays a role
in regulating the relationship between representational ability (RA), logical reasoning
ability (LRA), thinking conversion ability (TCA) and holistic academic performance.

Research using scientometric analysis has shown promising results, as
research conducted by (Wang & Shahzad, 2022) can provide analysis results
regarding a summary of health literacy research (Li et al., 2022) in the field of
occupational safety shows that there is a domain, firstly the safety climate focuses
more on the development and validation of questionnaires and surveys in the context
of specific organizations, while safety culture research has studies a more
comprehensive discussion. Thus this research will be the first to visualize
scientometric mapping of the development of educational studies on academic
performance variables. It will help researchers find study topics in academic
performance analysis for future research.

The purpose of this study is to trace the development of the topic of academic
performance studies from 2010-2021 using the PubMed database. This will be the first
research on the focus of academic performance studies using scientometric analysis
using the R Biblioshiny application. This research will focus on the study of discussions
on the development of academic performance research.

METHOD
This study used a qualitative approach using scientometric analysis using the

R tool (Aria & Cuccurullo, 2017) and VosViewer (van Eck & Waltman, 2010). Science
mapping or scientometric is a spatial representation of how a scientific discipline and
articles between authors are connected (Small, 1999). The data in this study was
obtained from the dimensions.ai and PubMed databases using the search string
keyword "Academic Performance" from 2010-2022. The scientometric analysis aims

to visually provide the results of an analysis of the development of an object of study
of science. Scientometric using bibliometrics bibliophily R is more appropriately used
in this study because it will produce research predictions through thematic evolution
analysis by looking at the time slice in the emerging or declining themes section.

Research with scientometric analysis will be beneficial for the development of
science. Researchers will get the results of recommendations regarding future
research topics and predictions of developments regarding a study in the research
object. In addition, researchers will avoid literature review bias and bias in research
development (Rusliana et al., 2022). Scientometric research allows analysis based on
co-citation and grouping documents in two dimensions with a geometric triangulation
process (Small, 1994). The formulas for the bibliometric equations are as follows:

𝑉(𝑥𝑖, …. , 𝑥𝑛) = ∑𝑖<𝑗 𝑠𝑖𝑗‖𝑥𝑖 - 𝑥𝑗‖2 (1)
2

𝑛 (𝑛−1)
∑𝑖<𝑗‖𝑥𝑖 - 𝑥𝑗‖ = 1 (2)

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The result of the scientometric analysis is to identify the results of research
studies published in international journals with a digital object identifier (DOI) collected
from the PubMed database. The documents analyzed from PubMed were 1906
documents, annual growth rate of 12.69%, authors 7727, authors of single-authored
docs 65, co-authors per docs 4.74. The sections analyzed such as annual scientific
production, three-field plot, most relevant sources, bradford's law, country
collaboration map, lotka law, most frequent words, most global cited documents, most
local cited authors, most relevant affiliations, most relevant sources, source dynamics,
thematic evolution, trend topics and title word cloud, author impact, author production
over time, author production over time documents.
Country Collaboration Map

Fig.1 shows collaboration between authors in various countries in the world with
the topic of academic performance studies. In general, the author conducts research
on the topic jointly between countries. This can indicate that the characteristics of the
problem and the uniqueness of the object of study in different countries are different.

Figure 1. Country Collaboration Map

Annual Scientific Production
This analysis shows the development of research on academic performance

from year to year, as can be seen in Fig.2 that the growth of research with academic
performance studies has grown exponentially in 2021 to 841 articles. This is related

47 |JISAE (Journal of Indonesian Student Assessment and Evaluation) |Volume 9 Number 1

to the covid-19 outbreak event which caused all fields of human life to experience
major changes, one of which is in the field of education which is carried out through
distance learning (Al-Mawee et al., 2021).

Figure 2. Annual Scientific Production

Three Field Plot
On Fig. 3 displays the relationship between journal-title and author, some

sources show articles that are relevant to the topic of academic performance studies.
In this analysis using a database from PubMed, there are 20 journals that publish many
studies on the topic of academic performance, in addition to that there are 20 articles
with different titles, but on average they conduct case study research studies involving
students in high school and university. A total of 20 popular authors are also present
in this analysis. Furthermore, the analysis of the Three Field Plot country-affiliation-
authors in figure 3 using a database from PubMed, the results show that the authors
who conducted many studies on academic performance were mostly carried out by
western countries such as Canada, the United States, Spain, Australia, Netherlands
and Germany and the rest were carried out by several countries from Asia such as
Saudi Arabia.

Figure 3. Three Field Plot by Source-Title-Author

Fig. 4 shows several countries whose intensity of focus on studies on academic
performance is shown by countries such as Saudi Arabia (King Saud University),
Canada (University of Toronto), Australia (University of Melbourne), USA (Harvard
Medical School), Spain (University of Granada), China (Sun Yat Sen University) and
the Netherlands (Amsterdam University).

Figure 4. Three Field Plot by Country-Affiliation-Authors

On Fig. 5 shows the relationship between sources-authors-keywords, the
biggest keyword produced in this analysis is regarding academic performance, the
dominant author is Esteban-Cornejo I and the dominant source is Frontiers in
psychology.

Figure 5. Three Field Plot by Sources-Authors-Keywords

Most Relevant Source

49 |JISAE (Journal of Indonesian Student Assessment and Evaluation) |Volume 9 Number 1

This analysis features some of the most relevant journals and publishes many
research results with the theme of academic performance. There are 10 journals that
publish a lot about the study of academic performance, in the first place are the journal
Frontiers in Psychology (245 articles), the international journal of environmental
research (218 articles), Plos One (187 articles), BMC Medical Education (113 articles),
the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education (75 articles), Nurse Education
Today (71 articles), the Journal of Dental Education (62 articles), The journal of school
health (53 articles), journal of american college health (48 articles), BMC public health
(46 articles).

Figure 6. Most Relevant Source

Most Local Cited Sources
On Fig. 7 shows the 10 journals that are most cited by journals that are in the

data base and listed in the references. In the first order, it shows that the journal
Computers and Education is the most cited journal (2413 times cited), the next is the
medical teacher journal (1682 times cited), the anatomical sciences education journal
(1606 times cited), the nurse education today journal (1465 times cited), medical
education (1456 times cited), the BMC medical education journal (379 times cited),
the academic medicine journal (25 times cited), journal of educational psychology (21
times cited), journal of frontiers in psychology (19 times cited), and journal of human
behaviour (12 times cited).

Figure 7. Most Local Cited Sources

Most Relevant Authors
On Fig. 8 shows the author with the most articles in the PubMed dataset that

analyzes academic performance, this calculation uses N of documents. The first-place
writers are Wang Y (15 articles), Salamonson Y (13 articles), Chisolm-Burns MA (10
articles), Li Y (10 articles), Spivey CA (10 articles), Li J (9 articles), Puddey IB (9
articles), Wang H (9 articles), Zang X (9 articles), and Aguilar Parra JM (8 articles).

Figure 8. Most Relevant Authors

Table 1. Most Local Cited Authors

Authors Articles Articles Fractionalized

WANG Y 15 3.89

SALAMONSON Y 13 2.47
CHISHOLM-BURNS
MA 10 2.15

LI Y 10 2.22

SPIVEY CA 10 2.15

LI J 9 2.13

PUDDEY IB 9 2.82

WANG H 9 1.50

ZHANG X 9 1.59
AGUILAR-PARRA
JM 8 1.30

Top-Authors' Production over Time

Some authors are popular in the field of education, especially the object of study
of academic performance in Fig. 9 can be used as the main reference for researchers
in the field of education. This position can still change from each year this is
determined by the productivity of researchers. On Fig. 9 Author Wang Y is a fairly
prolific writer where in 2012 Wang Y has started writing about academic performance
studies consistently until 2022 and is followed by Salamonson Y, Chrisholm-Burns MA,
Li Y, Spivey CA, Li J, Puddey IB, Wang H, Zhang X, and Aguilar Parra JM. Each author
has a different starting point for writing, but there are only a few who are able to be
consistent in producing the results of analytical studies on academic performance.

51 |JISAE (Journal of Indonesian Student Assessment and Evaluation) |Volume 9 Number 1

Round circles with different levels of contrast indicate the level of citations in the
document, the darker the circle, the more the document is cited and the larger the
circle shows the quantity of the author's article.

Figure 9. Authors Production Over Time

Bradford Laws
This analysis sorts and categorizes journal titles based on the highest number

of articles. On Fig. The 10 journals with the highest level of article production with
academic performance publications are Frontiers in Psychology (245 articles),
International journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (218 articles) and
Plos one (187 articles). Furthermore, in Bradford Laws divides journals into several
zones, it is based on the calculation of journals that are in core sources which are
divided into three. On the Table. 2 journals of frontiers in psychology, international
journal of environmental research and public health, and Plose one are one-third of
the journals included in the zone 1 category as shown in the table. 2.

Figure 10. Bradford Laws

Table 2. Bradford Laws

SO
Ra
nk

Fre
q

cumFr
eq Zone

FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY 1
24

5 245
Zone
1

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH
AND PUBLIC HEALTH 2

21
8 463

Zone
1

PLOS ONE 3
18

7 650
Zone
1

BMC MEDICAL EDUCATION 4
11

3 763
Zone
2

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHARMACEUTICAL EDUCATION 5 75 838
Zone
2

NURSE EDUCATION TODAY 6 71 909
Zone
2

JOURNAL OF DENTAL EDUCATION 7 62 971
Zone
2

THE JOURNAL OF SCHOOL HEALTH 8 53 1024
Zone
2

JOURNAL OF AMERICAN COLLEGE HEALTH : J OF ACH 9 48 1072
Zone
2

BMC PUBLIC HEALTH 10 46 1118
Zone
2

Lotka Law
Shows the frequency of distribution of the author's scientific productivity. On the

table. 3 shows that there are 6929 authors who wrote one article document, 628
authors who wrote two article documents, 155 authors who wrote three article
documents and so on. However, few authors have articles above 5 article documents.
In lotka law, the author with the most documents is a prolific writer and can be used
as the main reference source which can be seen from the impact factor.

Figure 11. Lotka Law

Table 3. Lotka Law

Documents written N. of Authors Proportion of Authors

1 6929 0.89

2 628 0.081

3 155 0.02

4 31 0.004

5 12 0.002

6 11 0.001

53 |JISAE (Journal of Indonesian Student Assessment and Evaluation) |Volume 9 Number 1

Documents written N. of Authors Proportion of Authors

7 7 0.001

8 7 0.001

9 4 0.001

10 3 0

On Fig. 12 shows 20 topics summarized in the past 10 years, by looking at the
term frequency which is classified into four frequencies (100, 200, 300, 400) it can
understand the focus of educational studies every year. Research on the topic of
academic performance studies began around 2017 and began to experience
exponential growth around 2019 to 2020, this is estimated to be due to the impact of
covid-19 and other factors that cause academic performance studies to increase.

Figure 12. Trend Topics

Thematic Map
In thematic map analysis, there is an X line (centrality) meaning that the more

to the right the sub-study on academic performance, the more influential it is on the
field studied, while, the Y axis (density) means that the more upwards the more articles
that examine the sub-study of academic performance. On the bottom left there are two
possibilities, the first possibility is declining meaning that the topic of study on
academic performance is declining or emerging means that the topic of study on
academic performance is on the rise. On Fig. 13 studies on academic performance
were heavily influenced by covid-19 with the conduct of distance learning. On the lower
right side, it shows that if the study topic is getting to the bottom right, the topic is
widely cited and has a fairly high influence. In making decisions for research
development or finding novelty in research, you can choose a position that is bottom
left because the article is new or trending.

Figure 13. Thematic Map

On Fig. 14 using bibliometric analysis shows that the potential for future
research, one of the focuses is on teaching methods. This has been proven by the
conditions during the Covid-19 pandemic experiencing changes in learning methods
using distance learning. On the table. 4 shows the division of clusters on the topic of
research studies and future research potential.

Table 4. Thematic_Map_Clusters

Cluster
Callon
Centrality

Callon
Density

Rank
Centrality

Rank
Density

Cluster
Frequency

medical education 0.014001217
1.78727114

2 1 1 161
academic
achievement 0.076638558

2.41597716
3 2 2 1012

academic
performance 0.122595729

2.69340184
4 4 4 3210

medical students 0.085659678
2.59887892

3 3 3 1161

Figure 14. Overlay Visualization

55 |JISAE (Journal of Indonesian Student Assessment and Evaluation) |Volume 9 Number 1

Thematic evolution is the result of visualization of Bibliometric analysis using
biblioshiny R which explains the development of research studies every period
(Hernandez-Cruz, 2021). In this analysis, it uses a weight index inclusion index
weighted by word-occurrences and a clustering algorithm using walktrap. Thematic
evolution displays the development of the previous object of study (on the left side)
and the current development (on the right side), based on the results of this analysis
shows that there have been significant developments on the topic of academic
performance studies in 2020-2022 which are divided into several aspects such as
academic performance, critical thinking, GPA, flipped classroom, mental health, covid-
19, student engagement, assessment and covid-19. The results of the data analysis
are found in Fig. 15 as follows:

Figure 15. Thematic Evolution

Based on the results of interpretation using bibliometric analysis, there are at

least several developments in studies on academic performance, including:

Table. 5 Development of academic performance studies 2010-2022
Main Streams of Literature Sub-Streams of Literature Topic/Relevance Methods

Academic Functioning Quantitative, Qualitative, Mix

Academic skill Quantitative, Qualitative, Mix

Educational Policy School performance Quantitative, Qualitative, Mix

Educational outcome Quantitative, Qualitative, Mix

Educational attainment Quantitative, Qualitative, Mix

School environment Quantitative, Qualitative, Mix

Cognitive ability Quantitative, Qualitative, Mix

Educational Psychology Cognitive development Quantitative, Qualitative, Mix

Cognitive function Quantitative, Qualitative, Mix

Cognitive performance Quantitative, Qualitative, Mix

Attention Quantitative, Qualitative, Mix

Parental education Quantitative, Qualitative, Mix

Student Environment Bullying Quantitative, Qualitative, Mix

Socioeconomic status Quantitative, Qualitative, Mix

Sleep duration Quantitative, Qualitative, Mix

On the table. 5 shows that there are three fields of study that contribute to the
development of academic performance studies, the three fields of study are
educational policy, educational psychology and student environment.
Word Growth and Title Word Cloud

Research with the keyword academic performance has developed from every
year. By looking at Fig. 14 shows that research with academic performance studies
began around 2009 and continues to experience exponential developments and the
peak of the most research articles occurred in 2021. This shows that researchers'
attention to the field of education is quite high, this is related to the efforts of
researchers to improve the quality of global education and support the SDGS program.

Figure 14. Word Growth and Title Word Cloud

CONCLUSION

This study analyzed pubmed data base with the object of study regarding
academic performance, as many as 1906 articles were analyzed and found that some
of the focuses of studies in contemporary times were on educational policy,
educational psychology and student environment. The authors who have consistently
written about this study are Wang Y, Salamonson Y, Chrisholm-Burns MA, Li Y, Spivey
CA, Li J, Puddey IB, Wang H, Zhang X, and Aguilar Parra JM and in general the
authors are from China. Furthermore, based on the trend topic analysis, it shows that
the biggest study is about academic performance and furthermore, there are the latest
research trends in 2021 such as Covid-19 and mental health. The results of this study
found several opportunities for research in the field of education in the future, by
looking at several potential topics that develop in 2020-2022, namely regarding
academic performance, achievement, critical thinking, assessment, GPA, flipped
classroom, student engagement, and mental health.

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