Scientific production about electoral debates in Spain: Bibliometric analysis (1993-2018)

Electoral debates have been subjected to extensive study in the United States. However, there is a lack of studies analysing and assessing electoral debates in Spain. Hence, this project seeks to assess the current situation of research in this field. To this end, a bibliometric analysis of journal articles, book chapters, books, congress proceedings and theses, published in the last twenty-five years (1993-2018), was used. Five databases: Dialnet, ISOC, Teseo, Scopus and Web of Science (WOS) were examined. 107 documents were found. The source type, the authorship, the language and the development over time of publications were analysed. As regards journal articles, the following items were studied: the source of the journal, the affiliations, the main research focus, the main debate examined, the subject area, the type of research and the technique most commonly used. The results reveal that, first, the research is mainly disseminated by means of scientific journal articles; second, collaboration between authors is unusual; third, the language most widely used is Spanish, and, fourth, it rarely appears in impact factor journals.