The Critical and Hidden Mass in Global Higher Education Knowledge Production

Higher education research (HER) has experienced rapid growth and diversification, yet standard bibliometric approaches capture only a fraction of its contributor base. Rather than treating knowledge production as a linear accumulation of outputs, this study conceptualises HER as an ecology shaped by heterogeneous participation patterns. Informed by communities of practice and boundaryless career perspectives, we adopt a person-centred approach to characterise the development of HER and the diverse engagement within it. Using a global dataset of 213,492 HER articles (1991–2024) and 407,796 authors, we construct indicators of publication rhythm, participation span, mobility and discipline breadth, and apply cluster analysis to identify participation typologies. The results reveal that HER is sustained by two interrelated populations: a small critical mass of continuously engaged researchers and a much larger hidden mass of intermittent participants. Critical-mass authors, although only around 2% of contributors, are involved in roughly one third of all articles, and collaborations between critical- and hidden-mass authors represent a substantial share of the field’s output. The hidden mass, while individually contributing only occasionally, collectively produces most HER publications and brings in perspectives from other disciplines, sectors and locales. Within this structure, cluster analysis identifies two predominant participation patterns among the critical mass and four recurrent modes among the hidden mass, capturing differences in career span, cadence and breadth of engagement. Taken together, these patterns depict HER as a consolidated yet inherently cross-disciplinary field of knowledge production, sustained by collaborations that cut across disciplinary and institutional boundaries. MSC: 62P25 - Applications to social sciences JEL: I23 - Higher Education; Research Institutions