Volume 13, Issue 8 (August 2026), Pages: 31-43

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 Review Paper

Mapping research on cross-cultural academic adaptation among international students: A bibliometric review

 Author(s): 

Pibooltaew Pinkanok Wongpinpech, Melissa Ng Lee Yen Abdullah *

 Affiliation(s):

School of Educational Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Penang, Malaysia

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 * Corresponding Author. 

   Corresponding author's ORCID profile:  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1743-0106

 Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

 
https://doi.org/10.21833/ijaas.2026.08.004

 Abstract

The rapid internationalization of higher education has significantly increased the mobility of international students worldwide, making cross-cultural academic adaptation an increasingly important research topic. However, despite a growing body of research on international students’ adjustment experiences, the intellectual structure, thematic development, and collaboration patterns of research on cross-cultural academic adaptation remain insufficiently mapped. This study presents a bibliometric analysis of research on international students’ cross-cultural academic adaptation published between 2001 and 2025. Using a dataset of 150 articles retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection, descriptive bibliometric indicators and science-mapping techniques, including keyword co-occurrence, co-citation, and co-authorship analyses conducted using VOSviewer, were employed to examine publication trends, intellectual structures, and collaborative patterns in the field. The findings reveal a substantial increase in research output after 2015, with research concentrated in education and psychology and organized around interconnected themes related to psychosocial adjustment, learning processes, institutional contexts, and adaptation outcomes. The results also highlight the central roles of China, the United States, and Australia as major contributors to this research field, as well as uneven international collaboration patterns shaped by global student mobility flows. Overall, this review synthesizes the evolving knowledge structure of cross-cultural academic adaptation research and identifies directions for future studies, including comparative designs, broader geographic coverage, and emerging perspectives such as digitally mediated learning environments and technology-supported academic engagement among international students.

 © 2026 The Authors. Published by IASE.

 This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

 Keywords

Cross-cultural academic adaptation, International students, Academic adjustment, Higher education, Bibliometric analysis

 Article history

Received 21 April 2026, Received in revised form 1 August 2026, Accepted 9 August 2026

 Acknowledgment

No Acknowledgment. 

 Compliance with ethical standards

 Citation:

Wongpinpech PP and Abdullah MNLY (2026). Mapping research on cross-cultural academic adaptation among international students: A bibliometric review. International Journal of Advanced and Applied Sciences, 13(8): 31-43

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