Bibliometrics: A Means of Visualizing Occupational Licensure Scholarship

Introduction: Occupational licensure has recently been a focus of media and legislative attention, leading to debates regarding the value of and need for professional regulation. Objective: The aim of this study is to systematically identify, analyze, visualize, and interpret scholarship in this important domain. Methods: This study uses a bibliometric analysis of the articles published on occupational licensure in the peer-reviewed literature as indexed in bibliographic databases. Results: The occupational licensure research is focused around the emergence of a number of areas of inquiry: educational preparation, economic impact, labor market entry, benefits of occupational licensure, adverse impacts on minority groups, and scope of practice. A single researcher is central to the literature and views the topic through an economic and labor-market participation lens. Conclusions: The absence of scholarship relating to public protection must be urgently addressed if occupational licensure models that are proportionate to the level of risk posed by the practitioner are to be developed and enforced.