Autismo en la educación superior: una realidad global- contemporánea

Abstract

To analyse the global situation of autism in higher education through a bibliometric study, in order to identify research trends, strengths and main barriers documented in the scientific literature. descriptive and quantitative bibliometric study aimed at examining the distribution, structure and characteristics of academic production on autism in the university context. The corpus analysed consisted of 34 documents published between 2006 and 2026 in 27 academic sources, retrieved from specialised databases. The analysis was carried out using the Bibliometrix package of the R environment, allowing the calculation of indicators of scientific production, collaboration between authors, citation and geographical distribution of research. show a late but accelerated growth in scientific production. Between 2006 and 2022, only four publications were recorded; from 2023 onwards, a significant increase was observed, with 76.5% of the documents concentrated between 2024 and 2025. The corpus brings together contributions from 117 authors, with an average of 3.47 co-authors per document, reflecting a trend towards collaborative research. However, an international collaboration rate of 0% was identified, indicating limited global coordination. The main barriers identified in the literature are institutional, pedagogical, evaluative and social in nature. Although scientific interest in autism in higher education has grown significantly in recent years, significant gaps remain in terms of international cooperation, the development of quantitative methodological approaches, and the creation of inclusive university policies that guarantee the retention and academic success of students with autism spectrum disorder.