Bibliometric analysis of the existing literature on Covid-19 and its impact on higher education

Covid-19 has been among the most disruptive events in recent decades. At the time of writing, it has caused more than 5 million deaths worldwide and considerable economic losses. However, it has also sped up the process of technological development and technology adoption. One sector that has been deeply affected by the impact of the pandemic is higher education, which mainly includes universities. The higher education sector is a key sector in all types of societies. This strategic role lies in its mission to create and transmit knowledge. Given the universal importance of the higher education sector and the high impact that the Covid-19 pandemic has had on it, this study seeks to focus on this area by identifying the characteristics of the literature generated on this topic through the use of bibliometric techniques in the Scopus database. The searches were carried out in November 2021. The search terms were: Covid-19 AND ({higher education} OR (universities)). In order to delimit the scope of analysis, the areas of social science, human science, psychology, business management, and economics were selected. Only documents in English were included. As a result, 1,856 documents were obtained.