
Bibliometric Analysis of Disabled Tourism Research
Chapter from the book:
Özkaynar,
K.
&
Mecek,
M.
(eds.)
2025.
Theory, Research and Debates in Social Sciences - 2.
Synopsis
The aim of the study is to reveal the current status of scientific publications on disabled tourism using quantitative bibliometric methods. In order to achieve this aim, the word “disabled tourism” was scanned in all areas of the Web of Science database and 438 publications were reached between 2000-2024. Statistical analyses were performed using online VOSviewer and Bibliometrix R package program Biblioshing interface for visual mapping and network (node) analyses. The analysis was also completed with Microsoft Excel support. In the findings of the study, it was determined that 438 publications were written using 13,192 references and the average number of references was 30. It was seen that scientific studies published on 304 types of publication sources (books, journals, etc.) were presented by 1,248 authors. The number of single-authored studies was 78. In studies on disabled tourism, the number of words preferred by the authors was 1,458. The most repeated keyword in the research is “disability” (n=71), the country that contributes the most to disabled tourism research is South Korea and the institution with the most publications in the field with scientific production is the University of Aveiro. The most productive and scientifically influential author was identified as Simon Dacry. Although the Sustainability journal ranks first in terms of published findings, it was determined that the Tourism Management journal is the most cited in this field. It was determined that the data on disabled tourism complies with the Bradford Law but deviates from the Lotka Law. In addition, it was concluded that the Zipf Law is not compliant with this law as a result of its application. It is thought that this study, which opens a new dimension in disabled tourism research, will strengthen the theoretical structure of the field.