A Looking Glass into a Research Wonderland: Decades of Virtual Reality Scholarship Explicated via Natural Language Processing (In press)
Abstract
How has the field of Virtual Reality (VR) evolved and what type of research has made an impact? We used natural language processing techniques and generative Artificial Intelligence to develop the most complete review of experimental social science VR research to date (1992- 2024). From a collection of 21,195 abstracts written by 52,543 unique authors, 13 reliable themes emerged over time, with immersive experiences receiving the most recent attention. Interdisciplinary teams were cited more than less interdisciplinary teams, and watershed moments like mainstream industry embracing VR (i.e., Google Cardboard’s release) correlated with changes in scholars’ research focus. More than half of all papers over the past 30 years have been published in the last six years. Our database — the VRbalARchive — is publicly available, helping scholars investigate VR’s history and enhancing our theoretical understanding of the medium.