A Bibliometric Analysis on Padlet Research

A Bibliometric Analysis on Padlet Research

Aishah Baharudin, Norwati Roslim

Academy of Language Studies, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Cawangan Negeri Sembilan, Kampus Rembau, Malaysia

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2025.905000190

Received: 29 April 2025; Accepted: 04 May 2025; Published: 03 June 2025

ABSTRACT

This study seeks to establish a comprehensive, centralized reference for educators and researchers engaged in Padlet-related research. The primary objectives were to assess the trends in Padlet research, identify the key areas, and recognize the major players in the field. A bibliometric approach was adopted to examine and analyze 277 Padlet-related publications, retrieved from the Scopus database in February 2025. VOSviewer software was employed for data visualization. The analysis revealed that scholarly interest in Padlet began around 2014, with a noticeable increase in publications from 2018 onwards, peaking in 2023. Despite this upward trend, the pattern of scholarly collaboration indicates that the field remains relatively underexplored, as reflected by the limited number of publications indexed in Scopus. Therefore, this bibliometric study serves as a foundation for future research and can support the development of meta-analyses and structured literature reviews related to Padlet in education.

Keywords: Padlet, Bibliometric Analysis, VOSviewer

INTRODUCTION

Over the years, higher education institutions have experienced a transition to remote teaching and learning. As a result, research on Padlet has drawn growing attention from researchers. Exploring this area provides perspectives for future research across multiple disciplines, especially in education, focusing on enhancing interactive learning, collaboration, and student engagement through this platform. Moreover, an observational study by Ali (2021) revealed that most Padlet-related research emphasizes using and integrating digital tools to promote student involvement in a visually engaging and interactive way.

Previous research on Padlet has highlighted significant findings through bibliometric analysis. Many studies adopt bibliometric approaches to examine emerging patterns and trends within this field. Gupta (2013) noted that bibliometric methods are useful for evaluating research, a view supported by Crosthwaite et al. (2022); Ragadhita et al. (2021), who emphasized that such methods help uncover patterns in how phenomena occur—particularly benefiting arts and humanities researchers over the past two decades. In the present study, Padlet-related research from 277 Scopus-indexed journals was analyzed. The findings show a steady rise in research output and citations over the years, with Malaysia emerging as the most productive country, followed closely by larger Western nations such as the United States and the United Kingdom. These results offer valuable insights into the future trajectory of Padlet research.

Recognizing the significance of Padlet research to facilitate future research, this study undertakes a bibliometric analysis of publications related to the topic. Specifically, the paper addresses the following research objectives:

(i)         To evaluate the evolution and dissemination of Padlet research.

(ii)        To determine key areas in Padlet research

(iii)       To identify the major players in Padlet research.

METHODOLOGY

This study seeks to identify the research trends in Padlet, which was driven by a bibliometric analysis approach. It introduces a systematic, transparent and reproducible review process, therefore improving the data quality for future research (Haustein & Larivière, 2015; Zupic & Čater, 2015). The data were collected from Scopus, a major citation database where most of the top sources of publication, productive authors, organizations, and countries contributing to the studies were identified (Madadin et al., 2022).

This study consists of four steps adopted and adapted from a previous study of ‘Learner Corpus Research: A Bibliometric Analysis’ by Roslim et al. (2023), as presented in Figure 1.

Step 1: Research Design

Research questions were formulated as follows:

(i)  How has Padlet research evolved and been disseminated?

(ii) What key topic areas have been discussed in Padlet research?

(iii) Who are the major players in Padlet research?

This study’s bibliometric analysis aims to address the research questions. It explored publications by year, source titles, document type and language to examine the evolution and distribution of Padlet research for the first research question. The second research question identifies key areas in Padlet research through subject and keyword analysis. Additionally, the paper investigates the countries with the highest contributions, leading institutions, authors and citation analysis to answer the third research question.

Step 2: Bibliometric Data

This study selected the Scopus database and administered the following query: ‘Padlet’. 277 documents were retrieved from the database. The data obtained on 6th February 2025 were set without limitations on its document type, year of publication, subject area, and language. No identical research was detected. Therefore, 277 papers were included in the bibliometric analysis from 2014 to 2025. All selected documents were exported in CSV Excel format as bibliometric files.

Step 3: Bibliometric Analysis and Visualization Maps

This research utilized VOSviewer software (version 1.6.19) that built and visualized bibliometric networks. These networks encompass journals, researchers, or individual publications, including construction based on citation, bibliographic coupling, co-citation, or co-authorship. Additionally, VOSviewer provides text mining features enabling the creation and visualization of co-occurrence networks from significant terms found in scientific literature.

This study employed VOSviewer software (version 1.6.19) for three distinct types of analysis. The first analysis focuses on co-authorship that examines authors, organizations, and countries. Whereas, the second analysis analyses on the co-occurrence that explored the keywords used across the literature. Finally, the citation analysis was conducted, specifically focusing on countries.

VOSviewer software (version 1.6.19) was also used to display the data through network visualization maps. It includes three different visualization maps: network visualization, overlay visualization and density visualization. In this study, network and density visualization were deemed suitable for analyzing keywords, countries with the highest contributions, key institutions, authorship, and citation analysis.

Step 4: Results Interpretation

The final step includes the description and interpretation of the results. The workflow in this study is displayed in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Bibliometric Analysis Workflow for Padlet Research

RESULTS

This section presents the findings from the bibliometric analysis, addressing the following questions: (i) the evolution and distribution of Padlet research, (ii) the key topics explored within Padlet research, and (iii) the prominent contributors to Padlet research.

(i) Evolution and Dissemination of Padlet Research

To examine the evolution of Padlet research and the trend in its dissemination, this study analyzed the following data: (a) number of publications by year, (b) source titles, (c) document and source types, and (d) languages of documents. The analysis was conducted using data directly extracted from the Scopus database through the ‘analyze search results’ function.

1. Publications by year

Table 1 depicts statistics on the annual publications of Padlet research from 2014 to 2025, highlighting a growing trend in the number of publications. The first recorded documents on Padlet research appeared in 2014, with two publications: “Padlet Walls, Weeblies, and Twitter: Incorporating Multimodal and Digital Literacies in the San Antonio Writing Project and in a Seventh-Grade English Language Arts Classroom” and “Integration of Web 2.0 Tools in Learning a Programming Course.” Both were published and indexed by Scopus. Between 2014 and 2019, a total of 44 documents were recorded, with annual publications ranging from 1 to 15. The number of publications grew steadily from 2020 to 2023, increasing from 29 to 59, demonstrating a rising interest in the field. However, a slight decline was observed in 2024, with fewer publications compared to 2023. As this study was conducted on February 6, 2025, some journals had already released their 2025 publications, which were also recorded in the Scopus database. Figure 2 visually represents the document trends from 2014 to 2025.

Figure 2. Documents by Year (2014 – 2025)

The number of Padlet research publications by year is further displayed in Table 1.

Table 1. Number of Padlet Research Publications by Year

2. Source titles

The ACM International Conference Proceeding Series (ICPS) contributed the highest number of publications on Padlet (n = 11), closely followed by AIP Conference Proceedings (n = 10). Both serve as platforms for publishing the proceedings of high-quality conferences. Next in line were the Ceur Workshop Proceedings and the Turkish Online Journal Of Educational Technology, with a similar number of publications (n = 6). Table 2 illustrates the top 11 sources for Padlet publications.

Table 2. Top 11 Sources for Padlet Research

3. Source and Documents types

This study also aimed to identify the publication sources of Padlet documents by analyzing the data according to document source types. Table 3 reveals that articles were the most prevalent source, representing 167 (60.3%) of the total, followed by conference papers with 75 (27.1%). Book chapters accounted for 31 (11.2%), while conference review and general review accounted for 1 (0.04%). These publications were considered relevant and valuable for Padlet research.

Table 3. Sources for Padlet Research

The data were further analyzed according to document types. The Scopus database focuses on primary document types from serial publication, which implies that the author or researcher administers the presented findings. Consequently, this analysis revealed the research on Padlet and its publication. As illustrated in Figure 3, half of the total publications were from research articles (n = 167; 60.3%). Following the documents presented at a conference (n = 75; 27.1%) and book chapters represented 11.2% (n = 31) of the publications on Padlet. Other documents, such as notes, conference reviews, and reviews, represented less than 0.7% of the total publications.

Figure 3. Documents by Type

4. Languages used in documents

Table 4 shows that English was the dominant language, accounting for 92.4% of the 277 Padlet publications. Spanish ranked second, representing only 5.8%. The remaining documents were published in three other languages—Portuguese, Korean, and French—but these collectively accounted for less than 1.4% of the total. While Padlet publications were available in languages other than English, they represented only a small fraction of the total.

Table 4. Languages Used for Padlet Research Publications

(ii) Key Areas of Padlet Research

The key areas of Padlet research were examined through (a) subject area and (b) keywords analysis.

1. Subject area

This study categorized the documents by the subject area, as shown in Table 5. The data was directly obtained from the Scopus database using the ‘analyze search’ function. The results revealed that research on Padlet spans several fields. Approximately 80% of the studies on Padlet were in the social sciences, representing 39.8% (n = 196) of the total articles, followed by a substantial number in computer science (n = 87; 17.6%). The Engineering field contributed 8.5% (n = 42). In contrast, fields such as Art and Humanities, Business, Management and Accounting, Medicine, Physics and Astronomy, Psychology, Mathematics, Economics, Econometrics, and Finance each contributed fewer than 40 Padlet related documents.

Table 5. Subject Areas of Padlet Research

2. Keywords analysis

The primary purpose of keyword analysis is to determine the relevant matches for a search query and represent the content of an article (Corrin et al., 2022). Figure 4 presents a network visualization of the author’s keywords with a minimum of five occurrences. This study utilized VOSviewer, a software (version 1.6.19) tool for creating and visualizing bibliometric networks, to map authors’ keywords. The color, circle size, font size, and thickness of connecting lines indicate associations with other keywords. For example, keywords with identical hues were frequently grouped together. In placing more emphasis, the phrases students, teaching, learning systems, active learning, and curricular have similar shades of color, and dense lines correspond to closer cooperation and frequent co-occurrence (Zhang et al., 2022).

Figure 4. Network Visualization Map of Author Keywords with at least 5 Occurrences

VOSviewer was used to perform co-occurrence and keyword unit analysis, including the total link strength. The study set a minimum of five occurrences for a keyword. The data revealed that 1371 keywords appeared across 277 publications, with 45 keywords meeting the threshold. Although the keyword ‘Padlet’ appeared most frequently in the research, with 65 occurrences, the total link strength was primarily driven by the keywords ‘students’ and ‘teaching,’ which had link strengths of 153 and 117, respectively. Table 6 displays the twenty most relevant keywords related to Padlet in the study.

Table 6. Top Twenty (20) Keywords in Padlets Research

(iii) Major Players in Padlet Research

This study explored the features of scientific collaborations in Padlet research by analyzing (a) the countries with the highest contribution, (b) the main institutions involved, and (c) the analysis of authorship.

1. Countries contributing most to learner Padlet research.

According to the geographical distributions, over ten countries listed in Scopus contributed to Padlet research publications. Table 7 shows the top 15 countries, with Malaysia and the United States leading at 11.6%, followed by the United Kingdom (9.0%), Indonesia (7.9%), Australia (5.4%), Portugal (5.4%), Spain (3.9%), and Ukraine (3.6%). The remaining authors’ national affiliations accounted for less than 4.0%, spanning countries like India, Ecuador, Thailand, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, and Brazil. This demonstrates that Padlet research has a significant impact across various geographic regions.

Table 7. Geographic Origins of Padlet Research

Figure 5 presents the network visualization of the top 20 countries involved in Padlet research, generated using VOSviewer software. The maximum number of countries per document was set to 25, and the minimum number of documents per country was set to five when determining the thresholds. Out of 62 countries, 20 met these criteria, and these countries were selected for the study. Based on the VOSviewer network visualization in Figure 5, only the larger connected set, consisting of ten items, is displayed.

Figure 5. Major Countries Related to Padlet Research

2. Main institutions.

Based on the VOSviewer analysis, the maximum number of organizations per document was set to 25. It is important to note that Scopus data on organizations may not be harmonized, as organizations’ names may not follow a consistent format. With the threshold set, the minimum number of documents per organization was set at two. Out of 497 organizations, 17 met the thresholds, and these 17 organizations were selected for this study. Figure 6 presents an overlay visualization of the institutions contributing to Padlet research documents.

Figure 6. Overlay Visualization of Institutions Contributing Padlet Research Documents

3. Authorship analysis.

A co-authorship analysis was selected to analyze authors in Padlet research, with the maximum number of authors per document set to 25. The minimum number of documents per author was set to three to determine the VOSviewer threshold. Out of the 268 authors, eight met these criteria, resulting in the selection of eight authors for this study.

Table 8. Most Productive Authors in Padlet Research

Table 8 presents the eight most productive authors contributing to Padlet research. According to VOSviewer analysis, Rajiah has the highest number of publications on Padlet, with three publications. The other authors with two publications are Blady and Hankin, Chen, Elverici, Fee et al., Humble and Mozelius, Naamati-Schneider and Alt, and Novack.

Figure 7. Density Visualization of Productive Authors in Padlet Research

VOSviewer analysis in Figure 7 illustrates the density visualization of productive authors in Padlet research.

DISCUSSION

This study conducted a bibliometric analysis to obtain an overview of publications on Padlet. The first research question provides a clear understanding of the evolution and distribution of Padlet-related research. The Scopus database identified 277 documents related to the topic. The first recorded documents on Padlet appeared in 2014, with two publications: “Padlet Walls, Weeblies, and Twitter: Incorporating Multimodal and Digital Literacies in the San Antonio Writing Project and in a Seventh-Grade English Language Arts Classroom” and “Integration of Web 2.0 Tools in Learning a Programming Course.” The findings show that Padlet research began to develop in 2014, with the highest number of publications occurring in 2023, indicating a rising interest in the field. The Scopus data reported that 92.4% of the documents were in English, while the remaining were in Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, and French. More than half of the documents were in journal source type.

The primary focus of Padlet-related research in response to the second research question can be examined through subject areas and keyword analysis. Notably, most studies are within the Social Sciences, followed by significant contributions from Computer Science and Engineering. This interdisciplinary approach has fostered the emergence of innovation and enhanced creativity. According to findings generated using VOSviewer, while ‘Padlet’ emerged as the most frequently occurring term, the keywords ‘students’ and ‘teaching’ exhibited the highest total link strength, signifying their prominence in this area of research.

The final question focuses on identifying major players and their collaboration. Citation analysis can discern the relevance of publications within Padlet research. The most frequently cited authors are predominantly affiliated with institutions in Malaysia and the United States, with the United Kingdom and Indonesia closely behind.

This study acknowledges several limitations. Firstly, the exclusive use of the Scopus database may result in an incomplete representation of the research. The analysis was restricted to studies explicitly referencing Padlet in the title, abstract, or keywords, potentially omitting relevant works that addressed the topic without using the specific term in these sections. Second, inconsistencies in author identification—such as multiple registrations or variations in name spelling—may have resulted in inaccuracies in the attribution of scholarly work. This concern is further underscored by warnings generated by VOSviewer, which indicate issues with author and institutional metadata, including duplicate entries, missing information, and inconsistencies in the formatting of organizational names. Such anomalies may compromise the reliability and accuracy of the data (Kara et al., 2025). Lastly, the scope of this research was confined to leading journals indexed in Scopus, excluding potentially relevant publications from other databases such as Web of Science (WOS), ERIC, or Google Scholar. These limitations should be considered when assessing the generalizability of the study’s findings.

CONCLUSION

This study contributes to the existing knowledge by presenting current research trends related to Padlet and expanding the literature by applying the bibliometric method. As interest in Padlets research grows and needs further attention, conducting comprehensive investigations into the topic is essential. This study serves as a foundation for future researchers to develop the body of knowledge, identify potential gaps, and expand focus on journals from other databases for further comprehensive metadata analysis on Padlet research. Therefore, it offers more insights for researchers, practitioners, funding agencies, and policymakers to understand current and future research directions.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Universiti Teknologi MARA, Cawangan Negeri Sembilan, Kampus Rembau, Malaysia.

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