The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education Innovation: A Bibliometric Analysis of Global Research Trends

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the research trends in Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the world based on a bibliometric approach to research the higher education innovation domain.The data supplied by the Scopus database were the publications of 2021-2025 and led to 260 relevant papers.We analyzed the trend in publications, the networks of research collaboration, co-occurrence of keywords, and citation patterns using Vosviewer in the data.The results show that there has been a big rise in research on AI in higher education, especially since the COVID-19 epidemic.China and the United States are recognized as the giants in this area, which indicates the high level of research environment and collaboration throughout the world.The keyword analysis shows that the key topics of the study are machine learning, educational technology, learning analytics, artificial intelligence and students.The report also indicates that the future research will increasingly revolve around the use of data to learn, the application of AI in a manner that is just, and the way AI can benefit all in higher education.The findings illuminate the development and future direction of AI studies in the context of innovation in higher education.