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High Educ (2014) 67:457472
DOI 10.1007/s10734-013-9694-9
Anna Kosmtzky Georg Krcken
Published online: 8 December 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
Abstract The study combines a bibliometric approach with a content analysis of abstracts of articles to explore the patterns of international comparative higher education research in leading international journals. The overall data set covers 4,095 publications from the Web of Science for the period 19922012 and the amount of international comparative articles in this data set is analyzed utilizing a geographical coding. Contrary to a general proliferation of international and global trends in higher education, the results of the analysis most importantly reveal a relatively steady state of international comparative higher education research over the past 20 years. Further patterns examined show that international collaborative articles have a much higher share in international comparative research compared to non-comparative research, small-scale country clusters are preferred for comparison and there is a dense network of comparative clusters between Europe and the US. Finally, rationales for these patterns are discussed, as well as potential implications.
Keywords Comparative higher education Bibliometrics Higher education
journals Country clusters Collaboration
Introduction
International comparative higher education research has been part of higher education research from its very beginnings, and even earlier scholars have compared their institutions with those abroad. Scholars in higher education research have found it simultaneously
A. Kosmtzky (&) G. Krcken (&)
International Centre for Higher Education Research (INCHER-Kassel), University of Kassel, Moenchebergstr. 17, 34109 Kassel, Germanye-mail: [email protected]
G. Krckene-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
Growth or steady state? A bibliometric focuson international comparative higher education research
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intellectually challenging and rewarding to compare circumstances in different higher education systems and to learn from the comparison (e.g. Flexner 1930). During the 1960s and 1970s international comparative higher education research developed from descriptions of country peculiarities to systematic analyses driven by concepts and variables (Jarausch 1985). In the 1990s, international comparative higher education research eventually became a popular and valuable area of research in higher education (Teichler 1996), often related to initiatives of supranational organizations like the OECD, the World Bank, and UNESCO, and in Europe particularly by the EU, which have facilitated the growing interest in both national variations and international challenges (Spring 2009; Schuller and Vincent-Lancrin 2009). From...