Securing the Metaverse: A Bibliometric Analysis of Cybersecurity Challenges and Research Trajectories

As an emergent virtual shared environment, the metaverse offers a novel approach to digital communication. However, its rapid expansion and development raise complex cybersecurity challenges. To address this issue, the goal of this article is to map the scholarly contributions of cybersecurity within the metaverse through a comprehensive bibliometric analysis and examine trends, gaps, and future research directions. Following the PRISMA guidelines, a broad range of documents is included in the analysis, and a bibliometric software package was used for science mapping. The results reveal a significant increase in publications and citations in recent years, with contributors from across the globe. The analysis of keywords and abstracts reveals core themes and the citation analysis identifies the most prominent sources and articles. The thematic analysis identifies the existing and emerging areas of research that remain to be explored in future studies.