A Bibliometric Analysis and Science Mapping of Recommendation Systems Research from 1987 to 2022

This paper presents a bibliometric analysis and science mapping study of recommendation systems (RS) using VOSviewer and Bibliometrix-R package tools. The study analysed 9,232 Scopus-indexed papers from 1987 to 2022 to uncover publishing trends and evaluate the performance of researchers, journals, articles, institutions and countries in this domain. The study found that the United States, Spain and the United Kingdom produced high-quality research with high citation-to-publication ratios. China had the most publication and the highest level of international collaboration. African countries such as Nigeria, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt and others lag in publications, institutions, citations, and collaborations with developed countries. Joseph Konstan, John Riedl, Bamshad Mobasher, Robin Burke, Francesco Ricci, and Yehuda Koren were identified as leading researchers in the field. Recommendation systems are crucial for social media, e-commerce, and e-learning and high-performing algorithms are needed to help people find relevant, personalized information. The results of this study could help researchers and scholars find potential collaborators, and understand current trends and future directions in recommender system-related journals more quickly.