Social sciences and humanities on big data: a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive bibliometric review of social science, psychology, and humanities literature focusing on big data. Methods: Production and authorship trends, topics and areas as well as citations were analyzed by means of conducting a bibliometric analysis of a corpus of 5,500 Scopus articles published from 2010 to 2020. Findings: Analysis revealed similarities and differences among social science, psychology, and humanities literature in terms of publication, framing, and referencing trends as compared with the general big data literature: both fields show a steady increase, although the increase rate slowed down as from 2015; text production of both specific and general fields is led by just a few countries, with the USA and China being on top of the ranking; single authorship has been decreasing in both fields; the specificity of big data framing, in social sciences and humanities, has been identified with a critical view that surpass the ethical considerations, to include the social construction of datasets, the political and ideological uses of big data, and the discussion of its philosophical and epistemological foundations. Value: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to provide a comprehensive view on social sciences and humanities big data bibliometrics while providing context to compare results.