The scientometric evaluation of the research on the DEAF students in higher education

Abstract

The present study explores the characteristics of the literature on the deaf students in higher education published during the last three decades, based on the databases of Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and its implications using the scientometric techniques. The results of this study reveal that the literature in this field has grown exponentially during this period with 312 papers in total with paralleling enormous changes in the research landscape. Papers are mostly journal articles, reviews, and proceedings, being predominantly in English. The US is the most publishing country producing three-quarters of the output. The "Rochester Institute of Technology" is the most contributing institution. The most publishing author is "Kelly RR". "American Annals of the Deaf" is the most publishing journal whilst, "Rehabilitation" is the most published subject area. The total number of citations is 1,356, giving a ratio for the "Average Citations per Item" as 4.5 and "H-index" as 18. Hanson et al. [1] has had the highest impact on the literature. The results of this first ever such study of its kind, show that the scientometric analysis has a great potential to gain valuable insights into the evolution of the research on the deaf students in higher education.