The Evolution of Big Data in Knowledge Management: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Recently, the close relationship between big data and knowledge management has become one of the important agendas of businesses. The aim of this study is to systematize the literature on big data and knowledge management from a bibliometric perspective and to create a general framework for the past, present and future of the field. The present study examined 622 papers acquired from the Clarivate Analytics Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection database between 2013 and 2020. The results showed that the annual growth rate of the relevant field was found to be 42.9% indicating a higher popularity among researchers. China and USA are home to the most productive authors and institutions in the field. Also, country collaboration network, institutional co-authorship network, co-word network and co-citation network are given to present the intellectual structure of the field. This study is useful to understand leading trends in the field in terms of the most influential authors, institutions and countries, the most productive journals, the most frequent keywords, the collaboration networks and the co-citation networks. To the best of researchers’ knowledge, this study is the first bibliometric examination attempt to understand the flow at the intersection of big data and knowledge management over time.