Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality Research in Cultural Heritage: A Bibliometric Study

Abstract

Heritage allows us to learn about the different monuments of importance and the inherited traditions from our ancestors. However, many times the monuments get partly ruined due to natural wear and tear, sometimes due to attacks by invaders. To preserve the cultural heritage virtually, many researchers have used augmented, virtual and mixed reality for bringing ancient environments to live in those heritage sites. This study aims to identify publications related to virtual, augmented and mixed reality in cultural heritage and to present the bibliometric analysis of these studies. The research articles on virtual, augmented, and mixed reality in cultural heritage are retrieved using the Scopus database. The analysis is performed using VOSviewer and various parameters such as bibliographic coupling of the countries, publications, journals, authors, and co-occurrences of the author keywords are performed. From the analysis done in this study, it is discovered that the augmented, virtual and mixed reality research in the domain of cultural heritage is mostly concentrated in Italy and surrounding European countries. However, it is also found that the research in this domain is lagging in many countries even if those countries are the homes of various heritage sites. This study provides an extensive analysis of the recent literature related to augmented, virtual and mixed reality research in cultural heritage. This information science based analysis will help researchers to identify the prominent journals in this domain, recognize stalwarts in this field and follow their works, find out path-breaking publications to refer to, and predict the direction of future studies.