The Evolution of Bibliometric Research by Indonesian-Affiliated Scholars

This study examines the development, structure, and diffusion of bibliometric and scientometric research by Indonesian-affiliated scholars, asking how bibliometric practice has become embedded across disciplines, sources, and themes. A Scopus dataset of 2,845 journal articles and reviews (2,003 articles; 842 reviews) published between 2004 and 18 May 2026 was analyzed in BiblioSpy® version 1.0.0 through performance and citation analysis, logistic life-cycle modeling, Bradford analysis, source indicators, subject-area profiling and author-keyword co-occurrence mapping. Output was negligible until 2020, then rose every subsequent complete year, from 31 records in 2020 to 966 in 2025; the 376 records for 2026 cover a partial year to 18 May. The logistic model indicates late growth but is highly sensitive to this truncation: the observed corpus is approximately 87.5% of the fitted carrying capacity on the full window and 54.6% on the window ending in 2025, a retrieval-dependent projection rather than intellectual saturation. Source concentration is Bradford-like with a significant deviation: 42 core journals carry 33.5% of the corpus, while 835 peripheral journals carry a comparable share (log-linear R2 = 0.9701; Kolmogorov–Smirnov D = 0.1417, p < 0.001). Citation uptake concentrates in methodological reference works, timely reviews and applied studies, and does not coincide with productivity. The full keyword network is dominated by procedural terms, whereas the method-excluded network separates into substantive clusters spanning AI-enabled education, business, digital transformation, sustainability and higher education. The pattern indicates emerging methodological institutionalization, and the study argues for evaluating bibliometric work through transparency and conceptual integration rather than volume.