Metaverse: an emerging research area

Introduction: the development of science and technique has enabled the progress of computer equipment, connectivity and virtuality, giving rise to new technologies such as metaverses.Goal: describe the trends in scientific output on the metaverse in Scopus and Web of Science.Method: bibliometric study of the articles published in Scopus and Web of Science relating to the metaverse in the 1995-2022 period. Searching formulas were used for article retrieval. Productivity indicators were studied.Results: 76.82% and 67.46% of the articles on metaverse in Scopus and Web of Science respectively were published in the 2020-2022 period. China and the United States were identified as the most productive countries (Scopus: 17.82% vs 16.17%; Web of Science: 19.69% vs 17.81%) and the most productive institutions were Sabancı Üniversitesi (n=28) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (n=26). Originals and articles in English predominated; the most productive areas were Informatics and Information Systems and the area of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. In Scopus, 37.38% of the articles were found in open access and 40.21% in WoS.Conclusions: the metaverse is an emerging research area where China and the United States are the leaders. The publications in this area are written mainly in English as the lingua franca of science characterized by predominance of the original pieces of research and in areas such as information sciences and engineering sciences.