Visual literacy (VL) is a set of skills, attitudes and practices that enable students to understand and create visual representations of knowledge and information and to evaluate their authenticity and reliability. It is a critical competence and is closely related to other literacies that involve visual material, such as information literacy, media literacy, digital literacy, scientific literacy and data literacy. The development of VL according to a specific framework or standard is often embedded in the curriculum at different levels of education to facilitate learning, but it is also critical in many professional contexts such as medicine, art and design, where certain aspects are emphasized. VL is also important for the average person as we live in a world of visual communication where infographics have become very popular for conveying information.

The aim of this study was to capture the state of research in the diverse field of VL, to take a snapshot of its characteristics and trends in order to identify new research opportunities. To this end, we chose the bibliometric approach, and searched the Scopus database for the term »visual literacy« in titles, abstracts and keywords, between the years 1970 and 2024. Scopus bibliometric tools, Microsoft Excel, Bibliometrix/Biblioshiny and VOSviewer were used for the basic statistical analyses, the creation and visualisation of the bibliometric networks and the analysis of the results. As part of the performance analysis we examined scolarly production over time and identified the most prolific/influential authors and sources, as well as the most cited documents. In scientific mapping we applied co-word analysis of keywords to reveal topic structure and co-author analysis to reveal collaboration between authors and countries.

The results show that annual scientific production is increasing. Most papers on the topic were published in the Journal of Visual Literacy. The most cited papers deal with the fundamentals of VL and VL standards. Apart from VL, digital literacy and media literacy were by far the most frequently cited keywords. A main thematic structure has emerged in which VL is used in different educational contexts: higher education (related to information literacy), childhood/adolescence (digital/media literacy), visualization in life sciences (e.g. biochemistry, medicine), visualization in technical disciplines (e.g. design, engineering) and photography (e.g. in science, biology). Some of the keywords used in recent publications are Covid-19, data literacy, aesthetics, social media, storytelling, infographics and teacher training.

The study is expected to help researchers identify the topics, journals and references to focus on when planning to publish their work related to VL.

Keywords: Visual literacy, education, bibliometric analysis, science mapping.