Bibliometric Perspectives on E-book Evaluation

Abstract

The remarkable advancement in the computing technology brings a new paradigm shift in the book perspective, transitioning from the physical book to the virtual book. It involves multiple sectors such as in the educational, health, engineering, economics, arts and many more. Rapid evolvement in the economic sector creates innovative platform that allows the authors to delve into E-book business that can reach to a wider audience without geographical limitations. Nowadays, anyone able to produce an E-book, however, to ensure that the E-book meets the usability and requirements of the audience is also important and cannot be neglected. Therefore, E-book evaluation is critical in this perspective. This study aims to explore the publication trends in E-book evaluation from 1984 until 2025. Several key aspects were investigated in this study that related to the (1) publication trends and growth, (2) the key authors and collaboration patterns, (3) institutional and country influence and (4) keyword analysis. The data were derived from the Scopus database by using the keywords (e-book OR ebook OR "electronic book" OR "digital book") AND evaluation. There are 595 obtained results in which after screening, the number of publications included for the study is 452. Data analysis and visualization were made using the biblioMagika and VOSviewer. The most productive years in E-book evaluation publications is in 2019 with 33 publications. The most prolific author is Ogata, Hiroaki from Kyoto University with total of 19 publications. Meanwhile for the influential institution for E-book evaluation is Kyoto University, Japan with 11 total publications with 90 total citations. The most productive country is United States with 85 publications in E-book evaluation. The E-book evaluation can be done either quantitatively or qualitatively. Notably, the advancement of artificial intelligence offers new dimensions for assisting in the evaluation process.