Received: 21 June 2020 Revised: 22 November 2021 Accepted: 13 January 2022

DOI: 10.1002/bmb.21607

ARTICLE

Mapping research on biochemistry education: A

bibliometric analysis

Mayara Lustosa de Oliveira Barbosa1 | Eduardo Galembeck2

1
Integrated Reality Lab, Federal Institute
of Education Science and Technology of
Brasília, Brasília, Brazil
2
Educational Technology Lab, University
of Campinas, Campinas, Brazil
Correspondence
Mayara Lustosa de Oliveira Barbosa,
Federal Institute of Education Science and
Technology of Brasília, Integrated Reality
Lab, Brazil.
Email: mayara.barbosa@ifb.edu.br
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to map the research literature on Biochemistry
education, covering the scientific production indexed on the Web of Science
over the past 66 years. The open-source Bibliometrix R-package, an R-tool,
was used to carry out the bibliometric analysis. Our results describe (1) how
many articles were published per year and what is the annual average growth
rate; (2) which are the core journals, authors, and publications in the field;
(3) which countries and funding agencies contribute most to the development
of research in the area; (4) the leading collaborative research and co-citation
networks; (5) which articles were the most cited in the past 10 years; and
(6) which are the trending topics in the field. Our main contribution is offering
insights into the evolution of the field. Also, the use of a quantitative methodo-
logical design, which covers a large volume of publications, and could identify
possible gaps in the area.

KEYWORDS
bibliometric analysis, bibliometrix, Biochemistry education

1 | INTRODUCTION for teachers, to be technically ready to deal with the sub-

Several studies indicate the challenges of teaching Bio-
chemistry, as well as the efforts made by researchers and
teachers to make the subject clearer and its learning
more meaningful.1–3 Such efforts were also highlighted
in the bibliometric analysis of publications in the Journal
of Biochemistry Education.4 In this article, the authors
reveal a significant increase in the number of
articles published in the field of Biochemistry education
since 2014.
The exponential increase in the number of publica-
tions does not always represent an immediate or effective
use of the findings. It is especially evident regarding edu-
cation, in which the gap between research and practice is
even more apparent.5
Many researchers refer to the need of developing
and adopting evidence-based methods for Biochemistry
teaching6–9 and to the importance of disseminating strategies
ject in the classroom.10 Still, the gap between research
and the implementation of the proposals to the public
target remains.
Another point to emphasize is that the quantitative
progress of a research field does not always represent
an achievement in terms of innovation, impact, or
applicability. Thus, the publication of an analysis of the
Biochemistry education field allows us to disseminate
the instructional practices with higher impact, to verify
the profile and trends, as well as to carefully appreciate
possible gaps that create space for innovations in
the area.
It should be noted that in any area of knowledge, it is
essential to pause and to examine the collected informa-
tion and the progress made, to plan new and more con-
sistent steps. Such attitudes can represent the difference
between a fruitful research field and a dispersed field that
produces more of the same.11

Biochem Mol Biol Educ. 2022;50:201–215. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/bmb © 2022 International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology 201

202
It is well known that scientific publications, such as
peer-reviewed articles, are the safest ways to access vali-
dated information in the most diverse knowledge areas.
Thus, it is logical to conclude that the disclosure of data
contained in such documents can help to reduce the gap
between research and practice, to reveal instructional
practices recently used by teachers, and to disseminate
studies with a high impact in the area.
The purpose of this study is to conduct a bibliometric
analysis of the scientific research published in the Bio-
chemistry education area to find out the scientific knowl-
edge general layout, and to contribute to the creation of a
road map by giving light to those who will work in this
field in the future. Our sample was taken from the Web
of Science Core Collection database (WoS), considering
articles published from 1953 (first manuscript about the
Biochemistry Education available on the WoS) to 2019.
Bibliometric analysis can be defined as the statistical
analysis of scientific research. The method allows the dis-
semination of results with high impact and visualizes the
performance of authors, institutions, and countries.
Although the use of bibliometric approaches in the field
of education is relatively new, it has proved to be a
consistent and current alternative to review the research
in this field.12,13 Besides, compared to other methods,
bibliometry has the advantage of collecting and
processing large amounts of information, assisting in sci-
entific dissemination, and identifying gaps and trends in
the field by quantifying the literature in a given area.14,15
Other researchers had mapped the literature on Bio-
chemistry education before us, such as Nascimento,
Oliveira, and Bianconi,4 and also Silveira and Rocha.16
They conducted a systematic review to analyze the scien-
tific production that addresses educational strategies used
in Biochemistry teaching. However, the researchers'
focus was centralized just in papers with undergraduate
students as target public, and in the Brazilian scientific
production published between 2004 and 2015.
Wood17 conducted a review of how Biochemistry and
Molecular Biology were being taught in the 50 years
between 1950 and 2000. In a more recent study, also
focused on undergraduate students, Lang and Bodner18
reinforce that no reviews had been published examining
the literature on Biochemistry education research. They
present a survey considering articles on typical Biochem-
istry courses and courses that integrate Biochemistry
with curricular areas. The authors' aimed to provide a
source of information for educators interested in working
in the Biochemistry education field of research, especially
at the university level.
As can be seen, only a few studies have used
bibliometric approaches to map the literature on Bio-
chemistry education in recent years. Most of them are
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BARBOSA AND GALEMBECK
systematic literature reviews, which are not able to do
considerably more comprehensive coverage when
selecting and analyzing the available literature.13 Articles
published in this field have been limited to a single coun-
try or the analyses of teaching strategies used with under-
graduate students.
The authors of this study are looking to fill the gap of
the sample creation using: (1) wider public (K-12, under-
graduate, and graduate students), (2) the global context
of publications on the Biochemistry education area, and
(3) covering the scientific production indexed on the WoS
over the past 66 years.
In addition to expanding the survey in terms of time
and internationalization, we will also describe the growth
trajectory of the production in the Biochemistry Educa-
tion area and give an objective vision of its current state
by answering the following questions: (1) Which are the
leading journals, authors, and publications in the field?
(2) Which are the networks of collaboration between
authors and co-citation networks? (3) What countries
and financial agencies contributed most to the Biochem-
istry Education proposals development?, and (4) Which
are the trending topics in the area? Thus, this study aims
to offer a general description of the evolution and current
state of the Biochemistry Education research field.
Such data have implications for Biochemistry
teachers who are looking for teaching methods that can
be used to facilitate the learning process and for
researchers in the area who can find countries, institu-
tions, and authors to strengthen network links with their
colleagues around the World. The study may also be of
interest to students looking for a specialization in the
field, since they can get in touch with possible advisors,
identifying experts in the area, and more prominent
research groups.
2 | METHODOLOG ICAL
PROCEDURES
2.1 | Research design
Regarding the objectives, this is descriptive-exploratory
research19 and uses a bibliometric approach to review the
specialized international literature in the Biochemistry
education area, through the metadata extracted from the
WoS database. As exposed before, bibliometry is a quanti-
tative and statistical technique for the production and
dissemination of scientific knowledge in a specific area.12
The technique has been used as a synthetic and
robust way to offer specific data about a research field. It
is especially useful for identifying influential and highly
cited papers, trend topics, researchers, or research

BARBOSA AND GALEMBECK
groups, potential collaborators, or competitors in the sub-
ject area.20
2.2 | Data collection and sample
delimitation
This bibliometric review followed the steps of previous
studies, first conducting the selection of research objec-
tives, then establishing the criteria of manuscripts inclu-
sion and exclusion and, finally, defining the information
to be extracted based on the goals and expected
results.12,13,21
Our sample was created by a search performed on the
WoS database. This database was chosen because it has a
relevant range of coverage and internationally accepted
criteria for the journals evaluation. It is also the primary
source of data used to obtain bibliographic indicators,
reaching an authority status in the identification of high-
quality journals globally.22–24 Although the coverage of
the WoS journal titles (around 9000 active journals) is
not as comprehensive as Scopus (approximately 12,000),
this one has relatively weak coverage of humanities disci-
plines. The citations and calculations based on them are
only available from publications since 1996, which con-
tributes to a very skewed h-index for researchers with
longer careers than this.20
The descriptors for the search were selected from the
terminology of the UNESCO Education thesaurus and
from the Health Sciences Descriptors (DECS—BIREME),
which are: “Biochemistry and education,” as well as
related terms, such as “Biochemistry and teaching,” “Bio-
chemistry and learning,” and “Biochemistry and class-
room”. After selecting the descriptors, the Boolean
operators “and” and “or” were applied to the search
formula.
It should be noted that: (1) all publications from 1945
until 2019 were selected; (2) the search was performed
using the advanced search tool, so the addition of the
abbreviation “TS” (topics) before the formula indicates
that the descriptors can be found in the title, abstract or
keywords of the article. Given the above, this is the used
formula: TS = (biochemistry AND education OR biochem-
istry AND teaching OR biochemistry AND learning OR bio-
chemistry AND classroom OR biochemistry AND class).
After searching the database in May 2020, 4450 publi-
cations were found, which include letters, editorial mate-
rial, notes, software reviews, papers published in
conference proceedings, and articles. The next stage for
defining the inclusion and exclusion criteria of the arti-
cles found was followed. In our case, the inclusion
criteria were: (1) only peer-reviewed scientific articles in
journals indexed in the WoS database, (2) articles
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203
included in the categories related to the area, namely:
“Education Educational Research” and “Education Scien-
tific Disciplines”. Thus, 1259 articles were selected.
It is essential to acknowledge that the bibliometric
approach usually might exclude some researchers, publi-
cations, journals contributing to research on the analyzed
field. The objective of this study is to offer a general
description of the evolution and current state of the area,
and the omission of individual publications, although a
limitation of this study, should not significantly alter the
broader picture of the field that we intend to illustrate
through our research.
2.3 | Data analysis
For the data analysis, all files found were exported from
the WoS database to the RStudio software. The open-
source bibliometrix R-package, an R-tool,25 was used to
obtain the desired information, namely: (1) how many
articles were published per year and what is the annual
average growth rate; (2) which are the leading journals,
authors, and publications in the field, (3) which countries
and funding agencies contribute most to the development
of research in the area, (4) the leading collaborative
research and co-citation networks, (5) which articles
were the most cited in the past 10 years, and (6) which
are the trending topics in the field.
It is worth noting that, to obtain the authors' produc-
tion over the years, the collaboration and co-citation net-
works, as well as the main trend topics in the area, the
Biblioshiny tool were used. Biblioshiny is a web interface
for handling the data in the Bibliometrix package and
can be accessed through the RStudio software. The soft-
ware is free and allows us to build and view bibliometric
maps based on data from the network.
The software takes three steps approach to con-
structing and visualizing bibliometric networks: normali-
zation, mapping, and clustering.25 The units of analysis
(authors, countries, publications, journals, keywords,
citations, and references) are loaded in the format of
BibTeX files (Supporting Information) in the software.
Each paper is represented in the maps as rectangular
nodes. Lines connect related nodes. The width of the line
that connects them represents the strength of the rela-
tionship between the two nodes. Also, the relative
position of the nodes in the map represents the inter-
relatedness of these nodes.13 Thus, the closer nodes are
more strongly related to each other and are grouped into
a cluster, which is indicated by different colors on
the map.
Regarding the authors' production over the years, the
20 most productive authors were selected. In addition to

204
the frequency over the time, it is presented two other var-
iables: (1) the volume of articles in the year, represented
by a proportional increase in the circle size, and (2) the
impact, in terms of the average annual citation, represen-
ted by the color of the circle (the darker the color, the
higher the article impact).
The collaboration and cocitation networks were gen-
erated with the Louvain cluster logarithm in the Biblio-
shiny. The collaborative networks analyze co-authorship
between researchers, and the clusters can be interpreted
as a relatively formal research group. In these analyzes,
the nodes are the authors, and the links represent the
relationships between them. The higher the number of
coauthored publications between a pair of authors, the
wider is the line. The color of the nodes indicates the
cluster to which each author has been assigned. To our
analysis, we considered the 50 authors with at least two
connections between them, and authors with no links
with other authors in the map were excluded.
A bibliographic coupling of authors allows us to iden-
tify the cocitation networks. Our analysis included the
50 most cited articles, with at least two or more relations
with others in the dataset, and excluded those with no
bibliographic coupling relationship with other authors.
In this analysis, the authors share a bibliographic cou-
pling if they cite the same publication. The more cited
references that two authors have in common, the higher
their proximity. Thus, the clusters of authors are consid-
ered to share similar theoretical perspectives or methodo-
logical approaches.
Concerning the main trend topics in the area, we
used co-occurring keywords of the articles. Thus, the key-
words that appeared five times or more in a year are
shown on the graph. Although all the years were
included in the analysis, only data starting from the year
140
120
Number of Articles
100
80
60
40
20
0
1953 1958 1963 1968 1973
FIGURE 1 The number of articles published on the Web of Science between 1953 and 2019
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BARBOSA AND GALEMBECK
2000 matches the search criteria. The analysis of these
keywords can show recurrent research topics in the liter-
ature and broadly reflect the Biochemistry education
knowledge base over the years.
3 | RESULTS A ND DISCUSSION
3.1 | The growth trajectory, and the
leading journals, authors, and institutions
in the field
The 1259 articles found were published in 68 different
sources over 66 years, since the first article available in
the database was published in 1953. The number of pub-
lications over the period can be seen in Figure 1. The
annual growth rate of research in the area is 2.43%, with
more than 70% of the production being concentrated in
the past 10 years.
To verify when the first article focused on Biochemis-
try education was published, we searched with the same
descriptors in two other databases: Google Scholar and
Scopus. In the Scopus database, the first research to men-
tion the theme was carried out with students from the
University of Toronto.26 As a result, the authors report
effectiveness in the use of experiments as a teaching
method on coenzymatic activity.
In the Google Scholar database, the first article found
was published in the Journal of Chemical Education and
has a direct and straightforward title, “The teaching of
Biochemistry”.27 It is pointed out the diversity of the tar-
get audience for which the subject is taught in under-
graduate courses, as well as the need to think about
appropriate strategies for its teaching. In the WoS, the
first article about Biochemistry education was published
1978 1983 1988 1993 1998 2003 2008 2013 2018
Years

BARBOSA AND GALEMBECK
by Westerfield.28 The author supports Bailey's arguments
and complements that the future of Biochemistry
research depends on the stimulation of studies about new
ways to teach this science.
As can be seen in Figure 1, publications in the area
lost their oscillatory pattern by 2011, and the alert
pointed out by scientists for over 60 years, remain as one
of the main justifications for the investment in studies in
the area.4 The trend shown in the graph reveals an expo-
nential increase in recent years.
Regarding the journals with the highest number of
publications, about 90% (1155) of the manuscripts were
published in the 10 journals indicated in Table 1. The
first three journals have more than 100 publications each,
being Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education
responsible for almost 50% of the total papers, which
indicates that the journal can be considered the most
influential journal in the field.
Figure 2 shows the distribution of publications by
countries. Only six of them have more than 100 papers
in the period. As can be seen, the United States and
Brazil stand out as the first and second countries with
the most significant number of publications in the
area, respectively. It is worth noting that, although
Brazil is in second place in the number of publications
in the Biochemistry education area, it is also the pen-
ultimate in terms of the proportion of international
cooperation in publications, among the 10 that publish
the most. The United States, the most prolific and
influential country on Biochemistry education research
in our study, demonstrates the lowest collaborative ties
with other countries and territories included in the
analysis.
TABLE 1 Core journals publishing on Biochemistry education
Number of
Journals articles
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology 615
Education
Journal of Chemical Education 289
Biochemical Education 102
Revista de Ensino de Bioquimica 39
CBE-Life Sciences Education 25
Advances in Physiology Education 18
Chemistry Education Research and 18
Practice
American Journal of Pharmaceutical 15
Education
Journal of Biological Education 12
Academic Medicine 11
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205
England and India lead the ranking of the countries
that proportionately most establish international cooper-
ation in research in the area, with 20% of the production
from these two countries being articles with authors from
multiple countries. These countries are followed in the
ranking by Canada (18%), Spain (15%), Australia and
Portugal tied (14%), Argentina (13%), China (11%), Brazil
(7.5%), and the United States (4.9%).
Another noteworthy point is the funding agencies
for research in the area. In this case, the 10 agencies
that fund more studies are the National Science
Foundation—US (120), National Institute of Health—US
(35), Department of Health Human Services—US (35),
National Council for Scientific and Technological Devel-
opment (CNPq)—Brazil (16), Coordination for the
Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES)—
Brazil (10), Howard Hughes Medical Institute—US (10),
Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology—
Portugal (9), Support Foundation for Research in the
state of S~ao Paulo (FAPESP)—Brazil (8), National
Institute of General Medical Sciences—US (8), and
National Natural Science Foundation of China (6). It is
noteworthy that, although the database separates the
funded projects according to the authors' statement,
the National Institute of General Medical Sciences is a
subdivision of the National Institutes of Health, which
in turn is part of the Department of Health and Human
Services of the United States. Thus, these funds have a
similar origin.
It is possible to notice that five of the financing agen-
cies above-mentioned are American, and three are
Brazilian. As expected, countries that receive more
investment in the area also have more active researchers
and publications. The lack of financial support is still one
of the challenges for the development of research pro-
posals in the educational sphere.
Regarding the authors, all the publications found
were published by 3236 authors, with an average of 2.57
authors per document. The authors with the most publi-
cations in the period are listed in Table 2.
Although the authors indicated in Table 2 individu-
ally represent a considerable production in the area,
some institutions stand out as those that have more pub-
lications over the period. They are Purdue University
(26), University of California—San Diego (24), Federal
University of Rio de Janeiro (18), Missouri University
(17), University of S~ao Paulo (17), University of Seattle
(16), University of Toronto (16), Yale University (15),
University of Wisconsin (14), Monash University (13),
University of Brasília (13), and New Mexico Univer-
sity (13).
Another analysis that allows us to verify which
authors are the most influential is the one that takes
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206 BARBOSA AND GALEMBECK

F I G U R E 2 Distribution of publications on Biochemistry education around the world, from 1957 to 2019. The top countries by the
number of publications in the database are United States (659), Brazil (93), Australia (56), China (47), Canada (41), England (41), Spain (31),
Portugal (27), India (26), and Argentina (22)

TABLE 2 Top authors by the number of publications in the published the most in the area, his four articles published
database in 2013 are those that have the highest impact in the field
Number of among the 20 authors who have published the most.
Authors Institution/Country articles Another relevant fact is that researchers like J. Ricky Cox
Loertscher J. Seattle University/United 14
and Hal White are among the 10 that published the most
States in this period. However, they have few current produc-
Anderson T. R. Purdue University/United 13
tions in the area and none of them in the last 5 years.
States
Minderhout V. Seattle University/United 11
States 3.2 | Collaborative and cocitation
Cox J. R. Murray State University/ 10
networks on Biochemistry education
United States
research
Galembeck E. University of 10
Campinas/Brazil
The collaborative research networks between authors are
presented in Figure 4. Only authors, with at least two
Torres B. B. University of Sao 10
publications in collaboration with other authors on the
Paulo/Brazil
dataset, were considered in the presentation of the data,
Lewis J. E. University of Ottawa/ 9
totaling 28 authors. Each of the clusters can be inter-
United States
preted as a relatively formal research group, at some
White H. B. University of Delaware/ 8
point in the timescale analyzed. Thus, occasional collabo-
United States
rators may also be exposed. The size of the nodes shows
Rowland S. L. University of 7
the number of publications by the author, the larger the
Queensland/Australia
node, and the higher the number of publications.
Towns M. H. Purdue University/United 7 The green cluster, in the upper left corner, stands out
States
as the largest group of collaborators and the most bal-
anced in terms of production. The most recent article by
account of the frequency of publication over the years, as participants in this cluster29 analyzes the impact of using
can be seen in Figure 3. It is possible to notice that, virtual patients in teaching biochemistry to students in
although Ellis Bell is not among the 10 authors who have the Veterinary course. According to the authors, the

BARBOSA AND GALEMBECK
F I G U R E 3 The 20 authors that most published over the years. The circles indicate the volume of articles, and its color indicates the
impact of the production, the darker the circle, the more cited the article was
F I G U R E 4 Collaboration networks between top authors on
Biochemistry education. Only authors with two or more
publications with other authors on the dataset were considered in
the analysis
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207
e-learning device was developed to increase attention and
motivation, strengthening active, and self-directed learn-
ing. The learning progress and student success were
investigated by administering a pre-test before the expo-
sure to the virtual patients' cases, and a complimentary
post-test after that. The authors analyzed motivation,
improvement in cohort performance, and level of confi-
dence in rating questions. Results show that the virtual
interactive cases helped students to understand the rele-
vance of basic sciences in veterinary education. Differ-
ences between pre- and post-tests revealed knowledge
improvement and enhanced confidence in decision-
making.
In second, tied with four researchers each are the red
and orange clusters. The first one contains the author
with the largest number of publications in the area. The
most recent manuscript by the researchers from this clus-
ter addresses the difficulty that many students have in
understanding noncovalent interactions.30 The authors
worked in collaboration with a community of chemistry,

208
biology, and biochemistry educators to develop a con-
struct map to guide the development of instructional and
assessment resources related to the physical basis of
noncovalent interactions in a biochemical context. This
map was devised using data about student learning and
expert perspectives on noncovalent interactions, resulting
in a framework that provides a detailed roadmap for
teaching and learning related to this essential concept.
In the orange cluster, the researchers' most recent
article investigates the use of WeChat OA, the most pop-
ular Chinese social media, as a teaching tool in the Bio-
chemistry and Cell Biology course.31 WeChat OA served
as an active learning teaching tool, providing more fre-
quent feedback and guidance to students, and facilitating
better student-centered communication in the teaching
process. During two semesters, resources such as course
notices, preclassified questions, after-class study mate-
rials, simulation exercises, and teacher-student interac-
tion, were used with the students through social media.
The authors claimed that the use of WeChat OA signifi-
cantly increased the proportion of students interactively
participating and resulted in a high degree of student
satisfaction.
In the purple cluster, both authors are in the group
of 10 authors with the highest number of publications in
the period. An analysis of the literature shows that both
still publish research on Biochemistry education. How-
ever, the last article published in coauthorship was in
2010. It was an editorial for a special edition of the Jour-
nal of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, which
focused on innovations and research from Latin
America, Portugal, and Spain. The initiative was
implemented to promote research communication of
educational experiences in Latin America and the
Iberian Peninsula.32
The last most representative cluster, in terms of the
publication number, is the green on the right side. The
latest research published by the pair assesses the effect of
identifying mistakes in a set of wrong statements deliv-
ered to small groups of medical students.33 Through the
application of pre- and post-tests, the authors concluded
that the act of identifying mistakes and correcting them
by a small group discussion is a useful but unconven-
tional revision exercise in Biochemistry.
As well as collaboration networks, cocitation net-
works also reveal essential aspects of research in the field.
The bibliographic coupling can allow the identification of
research lines, thematic areas, and also important actors
in the research field. The cluster in Figure 5 indicates the
50 most cited works, with a minimum of two connections
between them. It is possible to identify four clusters with
a particular definition, and the most cited works appear
in larger boxes. Next, we will make a synthesis of the
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BARBOSA AND GALEMBECK
articles, revealing the possible guiding theme of these
groups.
The articles' titles and abstracts in the red cluster
reveal research more concerned with the nature and
importance of visualization in Biochemistry education.
In the most cited article of the cluster, Schönborn and
Anderson34 point out that students should be explicitly
taught visual literacy and learn skills for using visualiza-
tion tools in the Biochemistry curricula. However, the
authors reinforce that little pedagogical attention has
been given to this vital component of Biochemistry edu-
cation. Thus, the main focus of this cluster is to offer
fundamental guidelines or instructional practice sugges-
tions for the promotion of visualization and visual liter-
acy among students that are studying molecular
biosciences.
The red cluster is centrally positioned, between the
blue and the green clusters, being more interconnected
with the first one. This proximity indicates a correlation
between them, that is, the articles are alluding to similar
subjects. In the case of the blue cluster, the focus is on
teaching molecular geometry with three-dimensional
models to facilitate the visualization of molecular struc-
tures. In the most recent research of the cluster,35 the
authors carried out research to systematically assess the
current use of molecular visualization in the classroom.
Interviews with participants revealed an interest in
molecular visualization in teaching, a wide diversity of
software preferences, and the desire for more quality
methods and devices to incorporate visualization into
their teaching process.
The green cluster is more distant from the red one.
This cluster presents active learning and student engage-
ment as essential tools in Biochemistry teaching, as well
as the definition of what are the fundamental concepts to
be taught in the course. Some articles are highlighted at
the center of the cluster, for example, the research of
Eberlein et al.,36 which presents a comparison between
several student-centered and active-learning pedagogies,
namely: problem-based learning, process-oriented guided
inquiry learning, and peer-led team learning. In the man-
uscript, the features of each of them are compared and
contrasted, allowing teachers to decide which approach
or combination of methods will suit their particular
situation.
In the same cluster, Freeman et al.37 compare student
performance in undergraduate science, technology, engi-
neering, and mathematics (STEM) courses under tradi-
tional lecturing versus active learning. The results
indicate that average examination scores improved by
about 6% with active learning sections and that students
in classes with traditional lecturing were 1.5 times more
likely to fail than were students in classes with active

BARBOSA AND GALEMBECK
FIGURE 5 Cocitation network revealing well-established clusters. The more a work is mentioned, the bigger the box
learning. The authors also point out that active learning
appears effective across all class sizes, although the most
significant effects are in small (n ≤ 50) classes. Not by
chance, the article is the most cited in the cluster, since it
is the largest meta-analysis of undergraduate STEM edu-
cation published to date.
Another article also related to active learning in the
cluster is that of Minderhout and Loertscher.38 The
authors describe that the Biochemistry courses at Seattle
University have been taught exclusively using Process
Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) without any
traditional lecture component. In these courses, students
participate in a structured learning environment, which
includes preparatory tasks, an in-class activity, and a
follow-up skill exercise.
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209
The instructor-designed learning activities and the
cooperative learning structure enables students to ini-
tially explore a topic independently, work together in
groups to construct and refine knowledge, and eventually
develop a deep understanding of the Biochemistry essen-
tial concepts. These stages of exploration and concept
development form the foundation for application to high-
level biochemical problems. As a result, the authors point
out that at the end of the course, most students say they
feel confident in their knowledge of Biochemistry and
report substantial gains in independence, critical think-
ing, and respect for others.
As a final highlight, Tansey et al.39 present a concern
to establish a core of basic concepts in the Biochemistry
and Molecular Biology courses, in response to the Vision
 15393429, 2022, 2, Downloaded from https://iubmb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bmb.21607 by Univ of Sao Paulo - Brazil, Wiley Online Library on [21/08/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
210 BARBOSA AND GALEMBECK

and Change project, which aims to make the undergrad-
uate course in Biology more consistent with the advances
of the current century. The article presents a consensus
list on learning outcomes and objectives based on five
fundamental concepts (evolution, matter and energy
transformation, homeostasis, information flow, and mac-
romolecular structure and function), which represent the
conceptual knowledge base expected. The authors con-
clude that this consensus will aid Biochemistry and
Molecular Biology educators in the development of
assessment tools for the new curriculum.
In connection with the theme of the last article
exposed, the document of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science, presented in the purple
cluster, is closer to the green cluster because it precisely
reveals the proposal of the Vision and Change project.
Regarding the other documents in the cluster, they are
also concerned about offering new methods to the Bio-
chemistry teaching at undergraduate education, and the
focus is on proposals for Courses Based on Research
Experiences (research based) or based on the investiga-
tion (inquiry based).40–42
The authors of the article positioned more centrally
in the purple cluster claim that research-based peda-
gogies offer students immense benefits over traditional
laboratory experiments. Also, the inclusion of first- and
second-year undergraduate students in research projects
helps retain students in science majors, stimulates the
growth of the field, provides an entry into further
research experiences, and changes the nature and man-
agement of research projects themselves.42
3.3 | High impact research and trending
topics in the biochemistry education field
Table 2 lists the most influential papers ranked by the
number of citations. A recurrent topic in these publica-
tions is the relevance of teaching students the visual liter-
acy, help them develop skills for using visualization tools,
and designing applications that take advantage of tech-
nologies like virtual reality, to provide engaging and intu-
itive environments for learning visually and spatially
complex topics of the Biochemistry courses.34,43,44

TABLE 3 Most influential publications on Biochemistry education by the number of citations

Title Author/year Source Citations

Saturation-transfer difference (STD) NMR: Viegas et al., 2011 Journal of Chemical Education 123
a simple and fast method for ligand
screening and characterization of
protein binding
The importance of visual literacy in the Schonborn; Anderson, 2006 Biochemistry and Molecular Biology 95
education of biochemists Education
Increased pre-class preparation underlies Gross, 2015 CBE-Life Sciences Education 80
student outcome improvement in the
flipped classroom
Insights into digestion and absorption of Goodman, 2010 Advances in Physiology Education 79
major nutrients in humans
Virtual reality: teaching tool of the 21st Hoffman; Vu, 1997 Academic Medicine 65
century
Study of protein-ligand binding by Moller; Denicola, 2002 Biochemistry and Molecular Biology 63
fluorescence Education
Cytochrome p450 enzymes in drug Furge; Guengerich, 2006 Biochemistry and Molecular Biology 61
metabolism and chemical toxicology Education
A model of factors determining students' Schoenborn; Trevor, 2009 International Journal of Science 55
ability to interpret external Education
representations in biochemistry
Retention of basic science information by Ling et al., 2008 Academic Medicine 54
senior medical students
Educational challenges of molecular life Tibell; Rundgren; Carl-Johan, CBE-Life Sciences Education 52
science: characteristics and implications 2010
for education and research

BARBOSA AND GALEMBECK
Other influential publications address issues related
to (1) active-learning environments such as those found
in a flipped classroom, which increase student perfor-
mance45; (2) practical experimentation to illustrate
some fundamental Biochemistry concepts, in a multi-
disciplinary context46,47; (3) studies about the challenges
of the inherently complex and highly abstract Biochem-
istry content, and the decline in retention of basic sci-
ence information in the subject.48,49 Two publications in
the table also updated information about Biochemistry
and related content to provide a reliable source
about topics widely taught in undergraduate courses
(Table 3).50,51
Another point that deserves attention is the thematic
evolution of the central topics in the field over the years.
This data were generated from the co-occurrence analysis
of author keywords, considering that these words must
have been mentioned at least five times in a particular
year to appear on the graph. The co-occurrence keywords
analysis represents recurring research topics in the litera-
ture and broadly reflect the Biochemistry education
knowledge base.
F I G U R E 6 Topical foci of research on Biochemistry education over the period 2002–2019. Only keywords occurring five or more times
per year were considered in the analysis (n = 35)
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211
In Figure 6, it is possible to see exponential growth on
the word number over the years. This is because only
recently, the Biochemistry education research area has
gained a higher volume in terms of publications.4 As can
seem, until the middle of 2010, the most frequent key-
words were “cooperative learning” and “clinical bio-
chemistry.” In 2012, “problem-based learning” was
widely used, and also there was an increase in the num-
ber of research focused on “assessment.”
Regarding cooperative learning, two papers from
2011 present insights about the relevance of the
method.52,53 The first study52 highlighted that cooperative
learning is a student-centered approach and reinforces
that one way to support the collective learning process is
through the formation of communities of practice. Briefly,
these groups should work together, engaging in activities of
mutual interest, building relationships through shared
activities, and creating common resources. The author
also provides an exploration of the critical features of
communities of practice, as well as some examples of
communities of practice designed to support teaching
innovations.

212
The second one53 investigated the effect of coopera-
tive and individualistic learning strategies on the aca-
demic performance of students in the general chemistry
laboratory. The findings revealed that a cooperative
learning strategy is more effective than an individualistic
approach, and the students in the cooperative group per-
formed significantly better. Also, the majority of the stu-
dents agreed that working as a group in the laboratory
could improve their teamwork skills as well.
According to Figure 6, the current trend topic seems
to be “hands-on learning/manipulatives.” This was the
teaching method most frequently cited by authors in the
last 5 years. Two articles of this period reveal some posi-
tive aspects of the hands-on approach. In the first one,54
the authors present three practical experimental activities
to offer student groups an insight into several important
aspects of drug discovery, such as drug synthesis, activity
testing, and the construction of subsequent quantitative
structure–activity relationships. The educational goal of
the experiments was to expose students to the full spec-
trum of activities relevant to drug development and the
achievement of this goal, as evidenced by the keen stu-
dent performance in the practical report and the
final exam.
Using a pharmaceutically relevant protein, the
authors of the other research55 brought the concept of
enzymatic activity to the classroom. They designed a
hands-on interactive activity to promote the emerging
field of protein-based drugs as a source of scientific
careers in nanobiotechnology and to show the students
an image of “scientist” as an ordinary person working in
an exciting profession. Besides being inexpensive, this
activity proved to be motivational and adaptable for vari-
ous educational levels.
Regarding the Biochemistry content, the most recur-
rent keywords in the literature were “purification and
structure of proteins,” “enzymes,” “analytical chemistry,”
“organic chemistry,” “visualization,” and “molecular rec-
ognition.” Considering the target audience, the most fre-
quent keywords suggest that medical education, first-year
undergraduate/general, and upper-division undergradu-
ate, are the primary intended audience. This information
is relevant since it can reveal which content and audi-
ences have received less attention from researchers, all-
owing the recognition of gaps that can be filled by new
proposals in the area.
4 | C ON C L U S I ON S
To discuss the implications of this article, it is essential to
know that bibliometrics plays a critical role in ranking
the performance of research groups, institutions, and
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BARBOSA AND GALEMBECK
journals within the international scenario. Researchers
may use these data to establish new connections, identify
potential collaborators or competitors, or to choose the
highest impact journals to publish in. This analysis tool
also helps to recognize the most important papers and
leading researchers in a particular field. Knowing that
none of these data was collected before for in the Bio-
chemistry education research, our results are especially
useful since we provide an overview of the development
and the current state of this research area.
The results of our bibliometric analysis reveal that the
area has exhibited a significant productivity growth only
in the last 10 years. Thus, although it is not a recent study
field, only in the last decade the Biochemistry education
has gained more attention from researchers. This first
fact already suggests that there are possible gaps in the
research and proposals that can still be better tested and
evaluated. Also, point out that it is relevant to use strate-
gies to facilitate the socialization of the contributions
obtained through these works in recent years.
The most influential journal in the field is “Biochem-
istry and Molecular Biology Education” responsible for
almost 50% of the total publications in the period. A jour-
nal with such an expressive volume of publications indi-
cates a reliable source of analysis to find out current
research topics in the area and also a popular periodic for
paper submission, since it is highly likely that expert
authors will cite articles published there. However, the
concentration of publications in one or just a few
journals may be also a symptom of a lack of proper effort
and interest in the area, which can be harmful to the pro-
gress of the field in the long term.
Regarding the authors, the most productive in the
period are from American universities (Jennifer
Loertscher—Seatle University and Trevor R. Anderson,
Purdue University). Also, Purdue University is the insti-
tution that has more publications (26) over the period.
This result is consistent with the countries' analysis since
the United States is the most prolific and influential,
followed by Brazil. But it is worth highlighting that both
also demonstrate the lowest collaborative ties with other
countries.
As revealed by the results, much of the research in
this field occurs in just a few countries, and most collabo-
rations seem to be limited by geographical or linguistic
issues. Although a closer look at the geographical distri-
bution of publications provides evidence that Biochemis-
try education research has been developed in many other
countries, the productivity level outside the above-cited
countries is still low. Also, research partnerships and
internationalization have not yet been consolidated in
the area as a whole. Proof of this is the collaborative net-
work results, revealing that only 0.87% of the authors had

BARBOSA AND GALEMBECK
at least two collaborative publications with other authors
from the dataset, over more than 60 years analyzed.
About to the cocitation network clusters, they showed
the following central focus: (1) the importance of visuali-
zation in Biochemistry education to facilitate the under-
standing of molecular structures; (2) the active learning
and student engagement as essential tools in Biochemis-
try teaching, and the fundamental concepts to be taught
in the course; (3) the use of research-based or inquiry-
based learning to teach Biochemistry.
The topics covered by the most influential papers,
ranked by the number of citations, are also correlated
with the cocitation networks, revealing clear research
lines in the area, especially the ones related to the rele-
vance of teaching visual literacy and the use of active-
learning instructional practices. Other focuses of the most
influential papers are the use of practical experimenta-
tion to illustrate some fundamental Biochemistry con-
cepts and the decline in the retention of basic science
information.
These data offer identification of several schools of
thought shaping the Biochemistry education research
agenda. It can also present areas that should continue to
grow in the years to come or call to attention multiple
other research themes on issues related to students' con-
texts, teachers' attitudes, or Biochemistry contents that
are not covered by these topics yet.
To go deeper into the issue and see which has been
the researchers' focus of attention over the years, we also
analyzed the keywords. Through the keywords, it was
possible to identify the attention on testing teaching
methods, as cooperative learning, problem-based learn-
ing, and hands-on learning/manipulatives. It was also
possible to verify a target audience preference by medical
education and first-year undergraduate/general. As
already said, this information is relevant since it can
reveal which methods, content, and audiences have
received less attention from researchers. In this case, the
K12 audience and some Biochemistry content not related
to health education are the first identified gaps that can
be filled by new proposals in the area.
Though capable, the results of our research still have
certain shortcomings. One limitation of this study is that
the searches were performed just in the Web of Science
database, which might have excluded some publications
on Biochemistry education. Another limitation is that
only articles and reviews were included in the dataset,
leaving out other types of papers that also constitute valid
contributions to the research field. It is clear that no sin-
gle metric tool is perfect and will allow anyone to fully
evaluate a research field impact. However, we consider
that the bibliometric approach used in this study offers
fascinating insights about the evolution of the field, the
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213
leading journals, institutions, possible gaps in the area,
trending topics, and the challenges that undermine its
progress.
ORCID
Mayara Lustosa de Oliveira Barbosa https://orcid.org/
0000-0003-3356-0998
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