Bibliographic analysis of early childhood education studies in Türkiye

İngilizce (OpenAlex)

This study aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis of Early Childhood Education (ECE) studies involving Turkish researchers and to map the structure of the field in Türkiye. Using a bibliometric design, 662 research and review articles indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) database between 2005 and 2023 and classified under “Education Educational Research” with country information “Turkey/Türkiye” were analysed. Bibliometric indicators such as annual publication trends, citation performance, co-citation networks, author productivity and keyword distributions were examined using the R-based Biblioshiny software. The findings show that academic publications in ECE have increased markedly in Türkiye, particularly after 2011, parallel to changes in national higher education and research incentive policies; however, this quantitative growth has not been fully reflected in qualitative indicators such as citation impact, thematic diversity or methodological depth. The lowest annual average citation per article was observed in 2006, whereas 2016 had the highest citation levels, and only one of the ten most globally cited articles was published before 2010. Co-citation analysis revealed that methodological sources occupy central positions in the network, while Lotka’s law results indicated that a high proportion of authors contribute with only a single publication. These results suggest that although ECE research in Türkiye is gaining visibility in the international literature, the field still faces structural challenges in terms of sustained author productivity, methodological capacity and diversification of research topics. Future studies may focus on strengthening research collaborations, expanding thematic scope and enhancing the global impact of Türkiye-based ECE scholarship.