An Analysis of Scientific Articles on Science Misconceptions: A Bibliometric Research

Abstract

The aim of the study is to conduct a bibliometric analysis of the published articles related to science misconceptions. For this purpose, bibliometric analyses have been carried out with 859 articles published in physics, chemistry, and biology education between 1986 and 2019. The articles have been obtained through Web of Science Core Collection database using “science misconceptions” keyword
and the tendencies in the last 33 years are presented. The selected articles were put through bibliometric analysis to identify the results for the annual distributions of the articles; the average citation scores; the list of the journals that published the highest number of related articles; the list of the authors that had published the highest number of related articles; the citation burst scores of the authors; the scientific productivity of the countries of the authors; the articles that were cited at the highest rates; collaboration networks; and their patterns that were obtained through text mining methods of word cloud and word tree. The results indicate that there has been an increase in the interest in science misconceptions after 2010. The journal that has the highest number of publications on the issue is found to be Journal of Science Education while David F. Treagust is identified to have the highest number of articles published on the topic so far. The article that has been cited the highest is Furtak’s article published in 2012. The findings also show that Korea and China are the countries that are open to collaboration the most and that the most frequently used keywords are determined to be “science” and “students”. The results are meant to guide researchers in the field in their future studies.