Quarantine the Past? A Critical Bibliometric Analysis of the Growth of Higher Education EMI Research

Research on English as a medium of instruction (EMI) has expanded rapidly over the last two decades. This study presents a critical bibliometric analysis of this trend focused longitudinally on higher education (HE) EMI research over time, based on a corpus of 1,054 papers identified using Scopus and Web of Science. It finds that research in EMI has expanded, particularly since 2018, and that older papers are generally better cited than recent ones. An analysis of broad trends reveals that research foci and methodologies have been relatively stable, while there have been major shifts in where HE EMI research occurs, with countries like Kazakhstan being rapidly emerging contexts. However, an analysis of abstracts from papers in the corpus reveals micro-level shifts in both methodologies and foci. Finally, an analysis of which papers have been highly cited by HE EMI papers suggests several works that may have been influential on the field. Extending previous bibliometric reviews that have been largely descriptive, this study introduces a critical and historically grounded perspective that interrogates how citation practices and research growth reflect longer imperial and neoliberal legacies of English in higher education. We argue that, while HE EMI research is a recent phenomenon, the history of EMI itself is far longer than is often recognized, and this oversight is potentially detrimental to the field. Accordingly, we advocate for a balanced and historically informed approach to future studies of HE EMI.