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Record W4416444389 · doi:10.1163/21659214-bja10144

Mapping the Landscape of Digital Religion Studies: A Bibliometric Analysis

2025· article· W4416444389 on OpenAlexaboutno aff
Yunus Ergen

Bibliographic record

VenueJournal of Religion Media and Digital Culture · 2025
Typearticle
Language
FieldArts and Humanities
TopicMedia, Religion, Digital Communication
Canadian institutionsnot available
Fundersnot available
KeywordsQuarter (Canadian coin)BibliometricsCitation analysisTRACE (psycholinguistics)Cover (algebra)Web of sciencePerspective (graphical)

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Abstract The integration of religion into the digital sphere has given rise to Digital Religion Studies ( drs s), an academic discipline that has grown significantly over the last quarter century. This study employs a bibliometric analysis of 281 drs s-related publications indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) to trace the field’s development and identify avenues for future research. The analysis indicates a consistent rise in drs s research, with most papers authored by researchers based in the United States. Heidi A. Campbell is identified as the most prolific and highly cited author in the field. Religions and New Media & Society are the primary publishers in this area and have received the highest number of citations. Although these publications cover diverse topics, “digital religion” remains the central keyword. This analysis underscores the substantial growth and influence of drs s in academic research and highlights the potential directions for future studies.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Direct model labels (unvalidated)

Per-model category and study-design labels from the labeling rounds. They are machine output, unvalidated, and the disagreement between models ships as data. No study design here is MEDLINE-validated yet.

Model armCategoriesStudy designConfidence
gemmaBibliometrics
Domain: not available · Genre: Empirical
About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no
Observationallow
gptBibliometrics
Domain: not available · Genre: Empirical
About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no
Other designhigh
models splitAgreement compares identical category sets and study designs across arms.

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.008
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.051
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMetaresearch, Bibliometrics
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: Methods · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: Observational
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.992
Threshold uncertainty score0.043

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0080.051
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.001
Bibliometrics0.1350.217
Science and technology studies0.0020.001
Scholarly communication0.0090.005
Open science0.0010.004
Research integrity0.0010.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0030.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.041
GPT teacher head0.284
Teacher spread0.242 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Labeled directly by 2 models reading the full record.

Bibliometrics

The models disagree on parts of this classification; every voice is preserved in the section at the end of the page.

Study designObservational · Other design
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations1
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

Explore more

Same venueJournal of Religion Media and Digital CultureSame topicMedia, Religion, Digital CommunicationCategoryBibliometricsFrench-language works237,207