Comparison of Gamification, Game-Based Learning, and Serious Games in Medical Education: A Scientometrics Analysis

Introduction: Game in education aims to enhance human motivation and performance in a given activity. Gamification experts and health researchers are still unsure about the status of progress of game for health. So, to fill in this gap, the present study aimed to analyze scientific productions to identify production trends, subject areas, countries, institutes, and authors in these three areas on gamification, game-based learning, and serious games in medical education, as well as to determine co-authorship patterns.

Methods: The present descriptive quantitative research was conducted through scientometric analysis by using co-authorship networks in gamification, game-based learning, and serious games. First, an advanced search was performed from 1990 to 2020 and the studies were retrieved from Web of sciences, on Aug 17, 2021 The plain text format of data was inputted to Microsoft Excel, CiteSpace and Gephi to analyze scientometric maps for the three domains. Subsequently, the required indicators to review co-authorship networks were obtained: Degree centrality, Betweenness centrality, Closeness centrality, Density, Clustering coefficient, collaboration index and collaboration coefficient.

Results: There were 466 documents in gamification, 155 documents in game-based learning, and 295 documents in serious games. The results indicated the rising trend of scientific publications on the three domains. US was a prolific country in all three domains. Author collaboration has remarkably increased, although the number of single-author articles is still high.

Conclusion: Due to the increasing growth of publications on these three domains, research can be continued by forming specialized groups and supporting joint publications. Also, research policy-makers should promote author collaborations on the national and international scale.