Scholarly communication of bibliotherapy literature in South Africa

a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Many scholars have underscored the importance of reading and its associated benefits. Indeed, substantial evidence supports the notion that engaging with diverse forms of literature can function as a therapeutic intervention. This process is known as bibliotherapy. Despite its importance and long history, bibliotherapy appears to lack full recognition in South Africa. This study analysed publication trends in bibliotherapy literature in South Africa, to determine if it is practised. Data were drawn from the two major dominant databases, namely Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus. The study employed VosViewer software to discover additional keywords that could be used together with the term “bibliotherapy” to locate relevant and associated keywords pertaining to the concept of bibliotherapy. Data from each database were captured and analysed separately on an Excel spreadsheet. The study established that from the 2909 publications out of the two databases (1395 from WoS (1972-2022) and 1514 from Scopus (1946-2022)), only 16 were from South Africa, indicating a low level of publications. Furthermore, the publications were from the field of psychology and information science, which shows the interdisciplinary nature of bibliotherapy in the two fields of study. A potential avenue for fostering interdisciplinary collaboration between the fields of psychology, linguistics, criminology, and information science is highlighted.