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. 2017 Apr 20;12(4):e0176151.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0176151. eCollection 2017.

Is bilingualism losing its advantage? A bibliometric approach

Victor A Sanchez-Azanza  1 , Raúl López-Penadés  1 , Lucía Buil-Legaz  1 , Eva Aguilar-Mediavilla  1 , Daniel Adrover-Roig  1
Affiliations

Is bilingualism losing its advantage? A bibliometric approach

Victor A Sanchez-Azanza et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

This study uses several bibliometric indices to explore the temporal course of publication trends regarding the bilingual advantage in executive control over a ten-year window. These indices include the number of published papers, numbers of citations, and the journal impact factor. According to the information available in their abstracts, studies were classified into one of four categories: supporting, ambiguous towards, not mentioning, or challenging the bilingual advantage. Results show that the number of papers challenging the bilingual advantage increased notably in 2014 and 2015. Both the average impact factor and the accumulated citations as of June 2016 were equivalent between categories. However, of the studies published in 2014, those that challenge the bilingual advantage accumulated more citations in June 2016 than those supporting it. Our findings offer evidence-based bibliometric information about the current state of the literature and suggest a change in publication trends regarding the literature on the bilingual advantage.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Number of studies published every year in each paper category (A), and number of studies published before and after 2014 in the SBA and CBA categories (B).
Fig 2
Fig 2. Temporal evolution of mean citations per year of SBA and CBA studies published in 2014.
Error bars represent standard errors. Asterisk (* p < .05) indicates a significant difference in cites per year between the SBA and CBA categories.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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Grants and funding

This study received the support of Grant EDU2013-45174-P (AEI/FEDER, UE) from Spain’s Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness, and VSA received support from a predoctoral fellowship from Spain’s Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (BES-2014-069063 AEI/FEDER, UE). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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