Digital Humanities at the Threshold of Global Maturity: A Scientometric and Meta-Synthesis of Conceptual Themes with Policy Implications for Iran

With the rapid expansion of digital technologies, Digital Humanities (DH) has emerged as one of the most interdisciplinary domains of contemporary scholarship and has evolved into a dynamic space for redefining the mission of the humanities in the era of data. The purpose of this study is to map the scientific landscape and analyze global trends in Digital Humanities, while proposing policy implications for Iran. To achieve this, a mixed-methods design combining quantitative scientometric analysis and qualitative meta-synthesis was employed. In the first stage, scientometric and co-word analyses were performed on 4,479 scholarly documents indexed in the Web of Science between 1998 and 2025, processed using Excel and VOSviewer. In the second stage, to deepen conceptual understanding of the resulting clusters, the abstracts of selected papers from each cluster (a total of 160) were coded thematically in MAXQDA Analytics Pro 2022, following the six-phase framework of Braun & Clarke (2006), and then integrated through meta-synthesis. The results indicate that the field of Digital Humanities has progressed from the early stage of infrastructural development and open access toward more complex layers of data governance, digital literacy, semantic modeling, and AI-driven cultural interpretation. Eight major conceptual clusters were identified: (1) infrastructure, management, and digital access; (2) geography, space, and digital media; (3) cultural heritage and digital data management; (4) quantitative analyses and computational linguistics; (5) digital literary and cultural studies; (6) artificial intelligence and historical text analysis; (7) data visualization and human–computer interaction; and (8) classical digital humanities and ancient texts. These clusters reveal the field’s transition from mere digitalization toward the production of knowledge and complex interpretive practices.The meta-synthesis of the eight clusters uncovered five evolutionary levels of transformation in Digital Humanities: (1) formation of infrastructures and resources, (2) expansion of digital literacy and education, (3) computational and semantic analysis of cultural data, (4) innovation driven by artificial intelligence, and (5) integration and data governance. By identifying global trends and emerging clusters, this study provides a comprehensive overview of the dynamics, maturity, and policy-relevant dimensions of Digital Humanities in the global discourse and concludes with recommendations for national policy orientations in Iran.