Metaverse: Trend, emerging themes, and future directions

Metaverse is going to change human life in a profound way because it offers an opportunity to merge our physical world with the digital/virtual worlds. Yet, how much effort has the research community across the world and disciplines contributed and what are the emerging themes of metaverse? The study aims to answer these important research questions using a bibliometric approach. Using a search of (“metaverse” OR “metaverses”) in “Article Title, Abstract, Keywords” and the date range up to 2022 on March 15, 2023 in Scopus, 1031 journal articles, reviews, and conference papers were identified. Among the 1031 identified documents, 816 (i.e., around 80%) were published in 2022. Feiyue Wang of the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences was found to be the most productive author with 17 metaverse publications, followed by Elif Ayiter of Sabancı Üniversitesi with 11 metaverse publications. The Chinese Academy of Sciences (with its Institute of Automation) was found to be the most productive affiliation with 29 publications. China, the United States, South Korea, and the United Kingdom were the most productive countries that contributed to over 58% of metaverse publications. Co-occurrence of keywords analysis revealed that seven clusters were emerged. The clusters included “artificial intelligence and human perception,” “metaverses and blockchain,” “e-learning and students,” “metaverse, avatar and immersive,” “virtual reality, virtual worlds, and Second Life,” “three dimensional computer graphics and deep learning,” and “augmented reality, mixed reality, and human computer interaction.” Implications and future directions are given.