The emerging generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots, such as Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (ChatGPT), have recently taken different disciplines by surprise. Very few scholarly papers show the collaborative effort by researchers on the impact of generative AI in higher education (HE) and its implication on HE disciplines and activities. This paper uses citation network analysis by deep searching the different research articles using Scopus databases. A bibliographic analysis tool is used to reveal patterns of application of generative AI chatbots in HE, collaboration of generative AI research, and generative AI in HE among different countries of the world. Furthermore, it investigates the thematic topics that generative AI in HE researchers are studying. Research papers from Scopus databases were sampled. The sampling timeframe is from January 2022 to September 2023. This paper presents the preliminary findings of the work that was conducted for a doctoral thesis in computer science and information technology. The preliminary findings show that Spain, the United States of America (USA), and Australia are countries that collaborate more often on the development of generative AI chatbots. In the study, generative AI chatbots were most likely to cover plagiarism and essay inclusion, but very few covered research for postgraduate enterprises. The study concludes that Chatbots are an important part of teaching technology that should be embraced by higher education.