A systematic review of Spanish academic production in the field of social work

Abstract

Summary

This article is a systematic review of the Spanish scientific production in social work hosted in the Web of Science.

Findings

The article analyzes the current state of social work research in Spain. Since the creation of the European Higher Education Area, Spanish social work has had to meet university research requirements, including the publication of papers in journals indexed in the world's leading databases. Spanish scientific production is analyzed from its beginnings until 2020. The main findings were that most of such research that was published by Spanish social work academic was in Spanish, while other categories of authors, such as nonsocial work Spanish academic, publish more in English. Spanish-language journals were mostly indexed in Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), while those in English were in Journal Citation Reports (JCR) or Scopus, consistently receiving few citations. Women as main authors exceeded men in percentages of indexed articles. Bibliometric quality measures constructed with Scopus were slightly better than those with JCR. The most developed topics in the area were general and transversal issues such as immigration, social services, social intervention, and social policies.

Applications

The study demonstrates to Spanish social work researchers that they have greater likelihood of obtaining better quality indexes if they publish in English in JCR- and Scopus-indexed journals, resulting in enhanced academic career visibility.