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Procedia Computer Science 231 (2024) 753–758

Soft Computing and Intelligent Systems: Theory and Applications

Soft Computing and Intelligent
November 7-9, 2023,Systems:
Almaty,Theory and Applications
Kazakhstan
November 7-9, 2023, Almaty, Kazakhstan
Blockchain concept for the educational purposes: bibliometric
Blockchain concept for the educational purposes: bibliometric
analysis and conceptual structure
analysis and conceptual structure
Dinara Zhaisanovaa*
a*
, Madina Mansurovaaa
Dinara Zhaisanova , Madina Mansurova
a
Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Almaty 050040, Kazakhstan
a
Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Almaty 050040, Kazakhstan

Abstract
Abstract
This study utilized bibliometric analysis to examine the blockchain concept within the field of computer science as Blockchain
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professionals withscience
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contract, sharding blockchain, and fairness data trading.
© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
© 2023
© 2024 The
The Authors.
Authors. Published
Published by by Elsevier
Elsevier B.V.
B.V.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0)
This is an open access
Peer-review article underthe the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Peer-review under
under responsibility
responsibility of of the Conference
Conference Program
Program Chairs.
Chairs
Peer-review under responsibility of the Conference Program Chairs.
Keywords: blockchain; blockchain development; cryptography; thematic map; conceptual structure
Keywords: blockchain; blockchain development; cryptography; thematic map; conceptual structure

1. Introduction
1. Introduction
The state places a significant emphasis on the education system as a key focus of its initial policies. This is because
theThe state placesofa the
advancement significant
economy,emphasis
society,onand
thetechnology
education system as a keytied
is intricately focus of its
to the initial policies.
development, This is because
safeguarding, and
the advancement of the economy, society, and technology is intricately tied to the development, safeguarding, and

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +7-707-206-3777.

* Corresponding
E-mail address:author. Tel.: +7-707-206-3777.
zhaisanova15@gmail.com
E-mail address: zhaisanova15@gmail.com
1877-0509 © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
This is an open
1877-0509 © 2023
access
Thearticle
Authors.
under
Published
the CC BY-NC-ND
by Elsevier B.V.
license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Peer-review
This is an open
under
access
responsibility
article under
of the CC
Conference
BY-NC-NDProgram
license
Chairs.
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Peer-review under responsibility of the Conference Program Chairs.

1877-0509 © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0)
Peer-review under responsibility of the Conference Program Chairs
10.1016/j.procs.2023.12.142
754 Dinara Zhaisanova et al. / Procedia Computer Science 231 (2024) 753–758
2 Author name / Procedia Computer Science 00 (2023) 000–000

enrichment of human skills. Additionally, there is a concerted effort to enhance the caliber of professional training.
Swiftly addressing worldwide transformations, such as the shift to the sixth technological phase, aids in the rapid
adjustment to novel circumstances within scientific and technological progress. This, in turn, facilitates more effective
modernization of current procedures and gives rise to both societal and technological advancements within educational
institutions. The field of education continues to be quite disjointed (lacking a unified education system), with each
educational establishment offering services based on its resources.
Dai et al. [1] examine a platform designed for verifying the authenticity and integrity of educational materials in
MOOCs, catering to both educators and students. Kistaubayev et al developed a platform that creates a unified digital
register of students’ educational achievements, which is one of the most pressing issues in the field of education, based
on the Ethereum blockchain architecture [2]. Meanwhile, Guo and team [3] concentrate on managing digital rights for
multimedia resources within an online educational context. Patricio and Ferreira [4] utilized bibliographic coupling
of document references to identify emerging trends in blockchain and security. This approach facilitated the creation
of a framework that enhances comprehension of the blockchain security process. However, there is a gap in research
on teaching methodology of blockchain concept connected with challenges in the process of teaching blockchain
concept and what topics should we include in our teaching program.
In addressing the identified issues, it's crucial to shift the emphasis of educational programs towards individual and
cross-disciplinary skills, structure the learning process to include a blend of theoretical and hands-on knowledge and
implement contemporary technologies. The study aims to create a thematic map containing the conceptual structure
of the "Blockchain" domain for further use for educational purposes.
Integrating the conceptual framework of the blockchain domain into the broader conceptual framework of computer
science offers a fascinating intersection of technological principles. The blockchain, characterized by its decentralized
and secure ledger system, introduces novel concepts such as consensus algorithms, cryptographic hashing, and smart
contracts [5]. This integration encourages a more comprehensive understanding of the underlying principles that
govern blockchain technology, enabling computer scientists to explore its unique attributes and applications. By
amalgamating the blockchain framework into computer science, researchers and practitioners can leverage these
insights to innovate across various domains, such as finance, supply chain management, healthcare, and beyond. In
the case of application, foreign researchers conducted a year-long bibliographic study using the Scopus database,
focusing on materials within the context of Blockchain [6]. These findings serve as a valuable point of reference for
the realm of blockchain applications. However, their research scope was limited due to the period and description of
the trend of topics in the blockchain concept.
Furthermore, this amalgamation fosters an environment for cross-disciplinary collaboration, as experts from both
fields can exchange ideas, theories, and methodologies to collectively advance the capabilities and potential
applications of both blockchain technology and computer science. As a result, the integration enriches the overarching
landscape of computer science and contributes to the ongoing evolution of blockchain as a transformative
technological paradigm. In this way, this study aims to answer the following questions:
Q1. What are the most influential research by countries, articles, and authors related to the blockchain in the
computer science disciplines such as "Blockchain development" and "Cryptography in blockchain"?
Q2. What themes and trends form the conceptual framework of the related topics above?

2. Methodology

We initiated the process by conducting an analysis that involved bibliometric references and citations. This allowed
us to gather a significant volume of literature related to the concepts of blockchain, blockchain development, and
cryptography within the blockchain context. This compilation formed the foundation for our background analysis,
encompassing approximately 391 document articles spanning a period of nearly 7 years from 2017 to 2023. We have
utilized a scientific mapping approach to examine the current body of literature. This method entails analyzing
bibliographic information about a collection of documents sourced from a specific field of study.
Bibliometric analysis presents the application of systematic literature reviews and robust methodologies to ensure
the reliability of the information utilized and the outcomes produced [3]. Additionally, we employed VOSviewer and
R program software to create and visualize connections among bibliometric sources, identify leading authors, and
extract more refined insights from publications, scholars, or specific journals.
To enhance our search for more pertinent information, we queried the data related to the blockchain topic. We
explored the Web of Knowledge database on 15 August 2023 to acquire journals and articles associated with
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Author name / Procedia Computer Science 00 (2023) 000–000 3

blockchain, blockchain development, and cryptography in the blockchain. To enhance our search for more pertinent
information, we queried the data related to the blockchain topic and all fields with the keywords "blockchain
development" and "cryptography in blockchain", then the file was obtained by exporting various data elements to a
text file, including citation details, bibliographic information, abstracts, keywords, findings, and other relevant
information.
To create figures and data derived from referenced articles, we performed various analyses including keyword co-
occurrence, co-authorship analysis of prominent authors and country distribution, co-citation analysis of cited sources,
document and organization citation analysis, and co-citation reference network analysis within the fields of blockchain
and computer science. These analyses were conducted to generate thematic clusters or streams.

Fig. 1. Network Analysis with keywords (VOSviewer software)

Figure 1 illustrates the network analysis of the most frequently occurring keywords at the top. The keywords
consisted of blockchain, cryptography, security, cloud computing, internet of things, privacy, encryption, smart
contract, and authentication to select the most essential cited journals. Regarding Figure 1, six clusters are related to
the topic of blockchain. The occurrence of a term such as anonymity, bitcoin, blockchain, blockchain security,
blockchain technology, consensus, cryptocurrency, cryptography, cybersecurity, data integrity, distributed ledger,
ecdsa, Ethereum, ipfs, mining, post-quantum, secret sharing, traceability belonged to cluster one (red color). The
second cluster (green color) is connected to the terms authentication, blockchains, consortium blockchain, data
privacy, encryption, key agreement, medical services, privacy protection, protocols, public key, smart grid, and zero-
knowledge proof. The third cluster (blue color) is related to consensus protocol in peer-to-peer computing containing
terms of computer architecture, consensus protocol, distributed ledger technology, healthcare, interoperability, peer-
to-peer computing, privacy, scalability, security, smart contracts. The fourth cluster (yellow color) discussed the
application of Cloud computing and the internet of things that contains the term cloud computing digital signature
edge computing elliptic curve cryptography hyper ledger fabric internet of things machine learning. The fifth cluster
(purple color) focused on the game theory and outsourcing related to computational modeling fairness game theory
industrial internet of things outsourcing servers task analysis. The last cluster (tosca color) is connected to Access
control and data sharing. The terms were Access control, attribute-based encryption, data sharing, privacy-preserving,
and smart contract.

3. Results and discussions

Bibliometric analysis presents the application of systematic literature reviews and robust methodologies to ensure
the reliability of the information utilized and the outcomes produced [3]. The main information of descriptive analysis
756 Dinara Zhaisanova et al. / Procedia Computer Science 231 (2024) 753–758
4 Author name / Procedia Computer Science 00 (2023) 000–000

included the total number of authors (1304) and showed average years since the publication equal to 2.17. average
citations per document was 13.71 and average citations per year per doc was 4,25. The international co-authorships
percentage was 30.43. It is noticed the growing tendency of publications with this topic at the peak of 107 articles in
2022, whereas the publication of articles in 2023 is still in progress. In Figure 3, a comprehensive bibliometric
investigation was conducted utilizing the VOSviewer software in conjunction with the Web of Knowledge. Our
analysis comprised 391 documents spanning the period from 2017 to 2023.

3.1. Influential Author

We employed VOSviewer software to perform a co-authorship analysis, a technique utilized for identifying pivotal
organizations and researchers and exploring their collaborations. This analysis facilitated the identification and
ranking of top authors based on their contributions in terms of both document count and citations. According to co-
authorship analysis, the authors with the largest contribution were Liu Jianwei, Yu Yong, and Wu Qianhong (more
than ten documents). Similarly, when examining authors based on citations, He Debiao stood out with a total of 649
citations, followed by Choo Kim-Kwang Raymond (539 sources) and Yu Yong (445 references),

3.2 Country Distribution

Figure 2 illustrates the distribution of multiple-country publications (MCP), with the turquoise bar representing
single-country publications (SCP). To create this plot, the following steps were taken in sequence: Biblioshiny →
Authors → Corresponding Authors → Country → Apply.

Fig. 2. Corresponding Authors' Country

Figure 2 states that the corresponding authors were most commonly found in China with MCP and SCP rates equal
to 68 and 165 respectively. India (Number of articles= 35), the USA (N= 18), Korea (N= 8), and Spain (N=8) ranked
the top five corresponding author's countries. In the next step, we demonstrate the application of the Conceptual
Structure function, which employs MCA for creating a conceptual representation of the domain, and employs K-
means clustering to pinpoint groups of documents that share similar ideas.

Fig. 3. Conceptual structure map

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Author name / Procedia Computer Science 00 (2023) 000–000 5

The outcomes are visualized on a two-dimensional map. The Conceptual Structure incorporates routines for natural
language processing (NLP), specifically the term Extraction function, to extract relevant terms from titles and
abstracts. Furthermore, it incorporates Porter’s stemming algorithm to simplify inflected or derived words to their
fundamental word stem or root form.
Figure 3 presents a conceptual structure map. This visualization was generated by following these sequential steps:
Biblioshiny → Conceptual Structure → Factor Analysis → Multiple Correspondence Analysis Method → Field-
Author’s Keywords → Apply → Word Map.
Figure 3 shows the temporal structure of the words from 2017 to 2023 depicting research development in the area
of blockchain. One cluster consists of the terms: machine learning, data integrity, edge computing, zero-knowledge
proof, computational modeling, task analysis, game theory, and so on.
Regarding co-authorship analysis, it selected the top 4 authors' papers and applied thematic analysis (figure 4). The
thematic map consisted of five clusters, and when analyzing the author's keywords, specific niche topics included
Byzantine fault tolerance, responsiveness, and scalability. An emerging theme was sharding blockchain. The Basic
(developing) theme was blockchain, cryptocurrency, and smart contract. Motor (developed) themes were protocols,
cryptography, and cloud computing. Differential item fairness data trading cluster was located between two quadrants
such as basic and emerging themes.

Fig. 4. Thematic map

In turn, to construct each cluster, we utilized five primary columns. The primary objective of cluster analysis was
to assess the key journals and articles cited within the context of blockchain. It was defined into five main categories:
authors associated with each stream, the core purpose of the significant papers, and the principal findings.
The first stream and source is Byzantine fault tolerance responsiveness and scalability, it is represented by Liu
Yizhong et al., who proposed an equitable sharding selection process for committee member selection, which
encompasses mining procedures and the verification of member lists by a reference committee [7]. In the second
stream "Sharding blockchain”, it was designed a robust shard reconfiguration protocol that operates without requiring
secure randomness [8]. The third stream was identified as “Fairness data trading", The authors introduced a novel
architecture known as Secure Pub-Sub (SPS), which eliminates the need for middleware [9]. The fourth stream was
described as "Cloud computing and cryptography, protocols”, it introduced a protocol for outsourced storage in smart
cities, leveraging blockchain technology to facilitate data updates and enable public verification [10]. The final stream
called “Cryptocurrency and smart contract, blockchain" presented an energy-efficient and adaptable lightweight
payment system with remarkably low power consumption [11].
Finally, we proposed five basic streams from the Web of Knowledge on the related topics of blockchain for
computer science disciplines. The main objective of utilizing these streams was to identify pivotal papers within the
relevant literature. One of the notable streams we chose pertained to cryptocurrency and smart contract, blockchain.
It considered the problems and solutions connected with scalability problem while maintaining security and
decentralization, node selection and committee reconfiguration, difficulty in distributing secure and reliable services,
decentralized outsourcing storage in the framework of the smart city development, and elimination of transaction
758 Dinara Zhaisanova et al. / Procedia Computer Science 231 (2024) 753–758
6 Author name / Procedia Computer Science 00 (2023) 000–000

costs. All these themes and cases could be good material for game for the development of syllabuses of two topical
disciplines "Blockchain development" and "Cryptography in the blockchain". Blockchain is among the most recent
technologies garnering growing interest from various stakeholders across various industries, including the realm of
education. The results of this study also provide an overview of the current state of affairs related to blockchain in
education, which can serve as a guide for future initiatives in this area.

4. Conclusions

This bibliometric study gives the possibility to summarize the collected works on blockchain, blockchain
development, and blockchain in cryptography using text mining tools such as VOSviewer and the bibliometrix
package of R software. Network analysis, co-authorship analysis, country collaboration analysis, conceptual structure
map, and thematic map were assessed and presented through tables and figures. The result of applying co-authorship
analysis resulted in four clusters of top authors with a high level of citation and total link strength. The documents of
these top authors were used for thematic map creation, which resulted in five clusters, such as Byzantine fault
tolerance, sharding blockchain, fairness data trading, cloud protocols, cryptocurrency, and smart contract. Based on
the materials described, the conceptual structure map and thematic map can be applied to our educational software
products. Education possesses a worldwide scope and encompasses numerous stakeholders who need to acknowledge
the presence of others, even if they may operate independently within their respective organizations. Blockchain
introduces numerous applications to this domain, necessitating a modern, open interoperability that may pose
challenges when integrating with academic institutions and their proprietary systems. Such integration could be
provided by education learning games in the process of in the process of training young specialists.

Acknowledgment
The article is published within the framework of the grant funding project of the Ministry of Science and Higher
Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan № AP19679514 "Study of the conceptual apparatus of the "Blockchain"
domain using text mining and analysis of formal concepts: focus on teaching methodology".

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