Publication Trends in Physics Education: A Bibliometric study

A publication trend in Physics Education by employing bibliometric analysis leads the researchers
to describe current scientific movement. This paper tries to answer “What do Physics education
scientists concentrate in their publications?” by analyzing the productivity and development of
publications on the subject category of Physics Education in the period 1980–2013. The Web of
Science databases in the research areas of “EDUCATION - EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH” was
used to extract the publication trends. The study involves 1360 publications, including 840 articles,
503 proceedings paper, 22 reviews, 7 editorial material, 6 Book review, and one Biographical item.
Number of publications with “Physical Education” in topic increased from 0.14 % (n = 2) in 1980
to 16.54 % (n = 225) in 2011. Total number of receiving citations is 8071, with approximately
citations per papers of 5.93. The results show the publication and citations in Physic Education has
increased dramatically while the Malaysian share is well ranked.