Findings and Trends in Academic Freedom and University Autonomy Research: Scientometric Analysis

Oleksandr Shevchuk¹, Xiaodong Xu^1, and Chunxia Sun¹

¹College of Public Administration, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, P.R. China

Cite this paper:
Oleksandr Shevchuk, Xiaodong Xu and Chunxia Sun. Findings and Trends in Academic Freedom and University Autonomy Research: Scientometric Analysis. American Journal of Educational Research. 2023; 11(4):225-234. doi: 10.12691/education-11-4-6

Abstract

Gradual increase of the higher education role and influence on society, together with its' convergence with the market, forces governments to find different tools for regulating the autonomy of universities and academic freedom. To display the current state of scientific literature on this topic and formulate future trends, a bibliometric analysis of metadata from Web of Science and Scopus was conducted. Using the Citespace software and quantitative tools of scientometric analysis, all relevant articles published from 1992 to 2021 were subjected to statistical analysis and visualization. The co-author analysis highlighted 2004-2007 and 2017-2021 as the most active and growing research periods, the University of California as the most active institution, and Alberto Amaral as the most active author. Through co-citation analysis, it appeared that publications mainly analyze higher education systems, innovative policies, the impact of autonomy, and economic factors of autonomy. The current article is one of the few that draws the scientific literature network of academic freedom and university autonomy regulations research field. The results of this study make an important contribution to the field of knowledge, helping scholars to become more familiar with research topics, thereby contributing to the quantity and quality of future publications.

Keywords:
higher education university autonomy academic freedom governance scientometric analysis

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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