A WEB OF SCIENCE-BASED BIBLIOMETRIC PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF IMMERSIVE AND INTERACTIVE TECHNOLOGIES IN CULTURAL HERITAGE, MUSEUMS, AND CULTURAL TOURISM

Abstract

Immersive and interactive technologies are changing how cultural heritage is documented, interpreted, and experienced. Virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), virtual museums, and mobile heritage applications now feature across cultural heritage sites, museums, and cultural tourism destinations. Although research in this area has grown rapidly, no bibliometric study guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) has systematically mapped its scientific productivity, scholarly influence, and multidisciplinary structure using the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection. This study maps the intellectual landscape of the field by identifying the most productive authors, institutions, countries or regions, and journals, together with the most cited publications and the research-area distribution. A PRISMA 2020-guided bibliometric performance analysis of the WoS Core Collection was conducted, with a four-stage screening process retaining 726 English-language articles and early-access records published between 1994 and March 2026. The corpus accumulated 15,513 citations (average = 21.37 citations per paper; h-index = 59), and publication activity accelerated markedly after 2018, reaching 139 articles and 3,889 annual citations in 2025. China emerged as the leading contributor (171 publications, 23.55%), the ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage was the most productive outlet (39 publications), and Computer Science dominated the disciplinary landscape (260 publications). Within the analysed corpus, AR scholarship has accumulated the greatest citation impact to date, and the field displays a maturing, multidisciplinary structure. These findings offer an evidence base for tracing the evolution of immersive heritage research, identifying influential contributors and emerging directions, and informing collaboration, publication strategy, and technology adoption in cultural heritage and tourism management. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first PRISMA-guided bibliometric analysis of immersive and interactive technologies in this field based exclusively on the WoS Core Collection.