21st Century Skills: A Bibliometric Analysis (2004-2024)

Vijay Raj Nimmala and A Shahin Sultana
Pondicherry University, Puducherry

Pages:508-519

In the 20th century, 21st-century skills have become a trend in Education. They are
also getting prioritized in international and national frameworks. Few bibliometric studies
on 21st-century skills have been available in the last decades to address this gap. This
paper systematically retrieved data from the Scopus database of 485 documents from
journal articles, conference papers, editorials, and review papers between 2004 and
2024 (Two decades). The primary aim of this paper is to conduct an author and publication
analysis of 21st-century skills. To complete the bibliometric analysis, the Biblioshiny
package of R-studio and VosViewer was used for analysis and visualization; Microsoft
Excel was used for data cleaning, and Microsoft Word was used for report generation.
The study revealed that 65 countries had contributed to 21st-century skills, of which
Indonesia contributed 301 publications and the USA contributed 229. USA stands top
with 2690 citations. This study shows a clear upward trend in publications, with the
highest output from the USA, followed by Turkey and Indonesia. Finland and Malaysia
have relatively low publication counts, and these findings showed a significant increase
in the contribution of 21st-century skills.