Mapping The Intellectual Landscape of Resilience and Academic Stress in Higher Education: A Vosviewer Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Resilience and academic stress in higher education are both widely researched, but the intellectual wedges of both have yet to be mapped out. The present study performed a bibliometric analysis of 385 Scopus-indexed documents (2016–2026) by using VOSviewer to visualize publication trends, keyword co-occurrence and temporal overlay patterns. Results show that publication output increased sharply after 2021, coinciding with a move toward broader student mental health and well-being concerns rather than pandemic-specific issues. The most frequent and strongly linked keywords, “resilience” and “academic stress”, were in different thematic clusters: resilience was linked to adaptive capacities such as emotional intelligence, and academic stress was linked to clinical outcomes such as anxiety and depression. Research in the field of nursing education and the health profession already has a strong foundation and has been growing, while artificial intelligence and digital learning are new research directions. This descriptive, non-evaluative mapping offers a starting point for future empirical and intervention studies on student well-being in higher education.