Rapid growth and shifting geographic concentration of research on augmented reality in education

Introduction: Research on augmented reality in education has expanded, but its distribution across world regions and income groups has not been quantified. Methods: This cross-sectional bibliometric study analyzed 9,769 articles and reviews published in 2010-2023 and indexed in OpenAlex, linked to World Bank regions, income groups and population. Annual growth was estimated with quasi-Poisson regression, and shares were reported with Wilson 95% confidence intervals. Results: Output grew by 27.9% per year (95% CI 26.4-29.4%). Upper-middle-income countries accounted for 49.3% of works with country information and high-income countries for 46.3%. High-income countries produced 2.50 works per million inhabitants, against 0.19 in lower-middle-income countries. Latin America and the Caribbean contributed 6.5% of works, and its share fell from 9.8% in 2010-2016 to 6.1% in 2017-2023. A search that added Spanish and Portuguese terms raised the regional share to 13.2%. Country data were missing for 25.3% of works. Conclusions: Output grew rapidly and moved toward upper-middle-income countries, whereas output per inhabitant remained concentrated in high-income countries. The share of Latin America and the Caribbean declined, and its level depended on the language of the search terms.