Evolution of Social Work Knowledge Production Over 35 Years: An AI-Enabled Analysis of Trends in Empiricism,Methodology,Collaboration,Citation Patterns,and Output

Abstract

Purpose: This study developed a comprehensive bibliographic infrastructure addressing systematic coverage gaps in social work literature indexing and examined disciplinary knowledge production patterns from 1989 to 2025. Method: Article metadata was compiled from Web of Science, Scopus, Directory of Open Access Journals, and web scraping. A small language model performed classification and extraction tasks on abstracts. Results: Analysis of 62,602 scientific articles from 88 journals (1989–2025) revealed 4.9% annual growth. Empirical research increased from 43% to 72% of publications. Methodological composition shifted from quantitative dominance (69% of empirical studies in the 1990s) to methodological pluralism (47% qualitative, 44% quantitative in the 2020s). Author collaboration increased, with mean authors per article rising from 1.85 to 3.35. Citation analysis shows 17.5% of articles remain uncited. Discussion: Findings document exponential growth alongside substantial increases in empiricism, coauthorship, and qualitative methods. Persistent challenges in citation database coverage systematically disadvantage scholarship published outside mainstream commercial indexing systems.