Bibliometric analysis of global research trends on higher education internationalization using scopus database: towards sustainability of higher education institutions

Abstract

Sustainability in education has continued to evolve, which in turn creates a research niche that is able to provide greater opportunities for interaction between Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and their surroundings. Internationalization of higher education is one of the new forms of engagements in higher education for ensuring sustainability. This study seeks to understand the research in higher education internationalization on publication outcomes, co-authorships between authors and similar countries, and co-occurrences of author keywords. This can provide valuable opportunities in expanding collaborative networks to impart global perspectives into teaching, learning, and research development. For this purpose, a bibliometric analysis was carried out to identify a total of 1412 journal articles from between 1974 to 2020 using information taken from the Scopus database. The research wraps up similarities on the growth of research, with the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, China and Canada emerging as among the countries that publish the most. There is a growing popularity of the term ‘higher education internationalization’ as part of the global new trends of cross-cultural study in transnational education. Finally, this study calls for future research programs with a concern in developing the intercultural communication of graduate students for global competence skills towards sustainability of HEIs.