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Exploring Research Trends in Fantasy as a Psychological Construct: A Bibliometric Study Using the Scopus Database

Uttam Kumar Das , Dr. Ananta Kumar Jena

DIP: 18.02.025/20251002

DOI: 10.25215/2455/1002025

Received: April 26, 2025; Revision Received: June 14, 2025; Accepted: June 20, 2025

Abstract

The present study explores research trends in fantasy by conducting a bibliometric analysis of literature indexed in the Scopus database. The PRISMA framework was employed to identify and select articles from the Scopus database. A search of the Scopus database using the term “fantasy” resulted in 7,177 documents from which 502 articles were shortlisted based on inclusion–exclusion criteria and manual screening. The selected metadata were exported in CSV format and analyzed using the R package Biblioshiny and VOSviewer software for bibliometric analysis and visualization. The study identifies the most influential authors, articles, journals, countries, keywords, and trends in publication over the years. The most cited document was “Brexit Populism and Fantasies of Fulfilment” by Browning, C.S. (2023) with 88 citations, while Personality and Social Psychology emerged as the most influential source with 76 citations. Results show that although the number of publications fluctuated slightly, there has been an exponential overall growth. Research on fantasy as a faculty shows a positive research trend, which will turn it into an emerging research field.

Keywords

The author(s) appreciates all those who participated in the study and helped to facilitate the research process.

The author(s) declared no conflict of interest.

This is an Open Access Research distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any Medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2025, Das, U.K. & Jena, A.K.

Responding Author Information

Uttam Kumar Das @ uttam.kumar.das@aus.ac.in

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Exploring Research Trends in Fantasy as a Psychological Construct: A Bibliometric Study Using the Scopus Database

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Article Overview

ISSN 2455-670X

DIP: 18.02.025/20251002

DOI: 10.25215/2455/1002025

Published in

Volume 10 Issue 2, April – June, 2025

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