Mapping research trajectories in contemporary Hinduism through bibliometric analysis

Abstract

The concept of Hinduism, though, has been studied in religious studies for a long time; in recent years, publications on Hinduism have been a part of multidisciplinary studies. The present body of publication on Hinduism does not have a systematic literature review, which makes it challenging for the researchers to determine the research scope and know about the current trends, which can be resolved through Bibliometric analysis to obtain a structured overview of the development in this field in the last two decades. In total, 1193 published documents of various types were identified from 2004 to 2024 (excluded) in the Web of Science (WoS) database. The 1193 documents cover 1564 authors who have written documents in over 11 languages from 82 countries and 995 institutes. This research identifies the leading authors, countries, institutions, research areas, journals, and publishers based on the number of published documents. This study also analyses the current trends through keywords and several publications over the last twenty years to reveal how the field of Hinduism has advanced in the production of documents. The findings of this research aim to help researchers to understand the main concepts that define the new horizons of Hinduism.