Presence
in
Virtual Reality
Who is shaping the discourse on presence in virtual reality, and
what have they been saying?
ABOUT BIBLIOMETRICS
As a defining feature of virtual reality, the sense of presence is the most investigated construct in VR research. In those moments when immersive VR provides the most compelling experiences, it is the sense of presence that most aptly describes the user experience. For many decades, researchers have engaged with presence to uncover the secrets to creating user experiences that are safe, comfortable, meaningful, and memorable. ​
And yet, the term presence remains an elusive concept to define and measure in a way that provides meaningful insights for designers, researchers, and users. Who is shaping the discourse on presence in virtual reality, and what have they been saying?​​
​This site provides access to interactive versions of the bibliometric visualisations published in Frontiers in Virtual Reality "Charting the Landscape of Presence in Virtual Reality Research: A Bibliometric Review", 2025. Select the "Co-occurrence", "Bibliographic coupling" or "Co-citation" tabs to begin.
This bibliometric review used Biblioshiny (an open-source R package from Bibliometrix version 4.0.0) in conjunction with VOSviewer version 1.6.20 to explore connections between 6636 references downloaded from the Web of Science and Scopus databases (used with permission).
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PRESENCE
WHERE HAS THIS DATA COME FROM ?
6636 bibliographic records downloaded from Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus in June 2024
Search string:
Scopus: TITLE-ABS-KEY ( "Presence" AND ( "Virtual Realit*" OR "VR" ) )
WoS: ALL=(("Presence" AND ("Virtual Realit*" OR "VR"))) ​
​The downloaded bibliographic references included book chapters, peer-reviewed articles, conference proceedings and theses. Data cleaning reduced the initial search results from 21,482 downloaded files to a final collection of 6,636 references.​
This website only presents the interactive network maps created using VOSviewer. For a full analysis, please refer to full research paper "Charting the Landscape of Presence in Virtual Reality Research: A Bibliometric Review", Frontiers in Virtual Reality, 2025.
INSIGHTS
Presence remains a defining feature of VR experience, design and research
Find the complete paper here: "Charting the Landscape of Presence in Virtual Reality Research: A Bibliometric Review", Frontiers in Virtual Reality, 2025.
​Navigating the extensive body of presence research can be challenging​. These network maps provide a unique insight into terminology, themes, influential researchers, and key publications.
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As a defining feature of VR, presence stands out as a prevailing multidisciplinary concept in current research into the use of VR technologies in an ever expanding range of applications. Presence is a concept that resonates with the lay public and possesses a long, rich intellectual scholarly history.
​The cooccurence, co-citation and bibliogrphic coupling network maps give you the opportunity to interact dynamically with this data to explore connections, influences and concepts from over 30 years of presence research.
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The concept of presence provides rich opportunities to continue to explore the design, measurement and implementation of VR experiences.