Mapping Knowledge management research: a bibliometric overview

Abstract

In recent years, knowledge management (KM) has consistently attained considerably growing research attention. Consequently, several literature reviews have been performed addressing different topic areas of KM. This paper seeks to present a comprehensive bibliometric and network analysis on KM to understand its development from the perspective of academic communities. Subsequently, it seeks to identify the structure of associations between prior and current themes, predict emerging trends and offer a longitudinal perspective on KM research. This study used web of science database and the initial sample was trimmed down by considering only the articles contributing to KM literature, and further 8,721 KM papers published in the last 30 years were systematically evaluated. The descriptive statistics and science mapping methods employing co-citation analysis were performed with VOSviewer software. In the descriptive analysis, we have analysed publication trends over time, geographical localization of the contributing institutions, journals, most prolific authors, top-performing institutions and most cited articles. Science mapping analysis is based on co-word analysis and co-citations analysis, namely articles' co-citations and authors' co-citations. The main findings of this paper will help researchers and academicians to develop knowledge in a specific sub-field by analysing the research outcomes of the papers included in the body of literature.