# Bibliometric Analysis of Social Robotics Research: Identifying Research Trends and Knowledgebase
## 4 Discussion
### Missing Elements in the Current Social Robotics Research and Future Perspectives  
Not all of the knowledgebase of social robotics belongs to the robotics domain. In this section, we explore other sources of knowledge that are represented or misrepresented from a citation analysis point of view. We also comment on key differences with the overlapping field of human-robot interaction. To reveal sources of information other than those in the robotics network, we measured the amount of references pointing to any article in the robotics research network and compared it to the amount of references outside it. Table 7 shows the results. We found 144,715 unique references, from which only 7% belongs to the robotics research network. However, on average, articles in the network receive more citations than those outside. References to outside material does not necessarily mean apart from robotics, but to books or unindexed robotics literature; or indexed and unindexed material other than those related to robotics. The most cited material of this nature is listed in Table 8. It includes key books on the field, articles on robotics from unindexed journals, the original article on the Uncanny Valley in Japanese and material that explores the topic of robotics from a social science perspective. Material of the last type includes: the media equation, which argues that there is a natural human predisposition to treat computer interfaces as people, even though the user is aware that they are not real. The work of [PERSON] is then referenced when tackling the design of social robotics; while the work of [PERSON] in the hidden dimension is an anthropological study on the use of space. The term \"proxemics\" was introduced here, referring to the measurement of social, personal and intimate distance and how it differs across cultures and situations. Social roboticists refer to this work when they try to implement proxemics in robotic systems, as robots should understand how close they can get to the human counterpart for an effective interaction [60]. Finally, machines and mindlessness by [PERSON], coauthor of the media equation, explores how individuals apply gender and ethnic stereotypes to computer agents and also explores the topic of anthropomorphism. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline \hline
**Source indicator** & **Total** & **Inside** & **Outside** \\ \hline References & 144,715 & 10,843 (7\%) & 133,872 (93\%) \\ Citations & 211,171 & 29,178 (14\%) & 181,993 (86\%) \\ Average & 1.45 & 2.69 & 1.36 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 7: Citations from social robotics papers to articles inside and outside robotics research. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c} \hline \hline
**\#** & **Title** & **Type** & **Author** & **Year** & **Citations** \\ \hline
1 & Designing Sociable Robots [6] & Book & [PERSON] & 2002 & 199 \\ \hline
2 & The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, & & & \\ Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places [1] & Book & [PERSON] & 1996 & 186 \\ \hline
3 & The Uncanny Valley [39] & Article & [PERSON] & 1970 & 159 \\ \hline
4 & The Hidden Dimension [61] & Book & [PERSON] & 1966 & 110 \\ \hline
5 & Affective Computing [62] & Book & [PERSON] & 1997 & 76 \\ \hline
6 & Assistive social robots in elderly care: a review [63] & Article & [PERSON] & 2009 & 75 \\ \hline
7 & Robotic assistants in therapy and education of children & & & \\ with autism: can a small humanoid robot help encourage & Article & [PERSON] & 2005 & 74 \\  & social interaction skills? [64] & Article & [PERSON] & 2004 & 73 \\ \hline
8 & Towards interactive robots in autism therapy: Background, motivation and challenges [65] & Article & [PERSON] & 2000 & 73 \\ \hline
9 & Machines and Mindlessness: Social Responses to & & & \\ Computers [66] & Article & [PERSON] & 2000 & 73 \\ \hline
10 & Swarm Intelligence [67] & Book & [PERSON] & 1999 & 69 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 8: Most cited literature from the social robotics research to outside of the network of robotics.