Visualizing the evolution and landscape of socio-economic impact research

• Main Authors: Majeed, Nauman, Ainin, Sulaiman
• Format: Article
• Published: Springer 2021
• Subjects: HC Economic History and Conditions; HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform; Q Science (General)
• Online Access: http://eprints.um.edu.my/36029/; https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85087830489&doi=10.1007%2fs11135-020-01020-7&partnerID=40&md5=bca33a95093449640b5befe55b62729e
• Institution: Universiti Malaya

One of the vital tasks to advance a specific line of research is synthesizing past research findings. Supplementing former quantitative and qualitative assessments of socio-economic impact research; an under-represented area, this study aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis of related articles. By means of co-citation and co-occurrence analyses, a bibliometric survey will give an alternate perspective by depicting the landscape and changing the path of socio-economic impact research over time. Utilizing the scientific visualization instrument VOSviewer and statistical software tool R, 2894 socio-economic impact works gathered from the Scopus database from 1965 to 2019. We used text mining techniques and presented major contents in the form of a conceptual structure map, word tree map, and word clouds. With a quantitative scientometric method, a historic and notable setting of research on socio-economic impact was provided, enabling us to follow the advancement of the field along with distinguishing the most productive authors, journals, institutions, and countries. We identified and envision the landscape of socio-economic research and track how this landscape has advanced. USA and UK are the prominent leaders in publications, although at a regional level most productive is Europe. Journal of Cleaner production, Climatic Change, and Plos One are the most influential and productive journals in the field. The insights of knowledge accumulated from a bibliometric review after mapping the landscape will give scholars an efficient comprehension of the advancement of the socio-economic impact field and a guide to further progress socio-economic impact research literature. © 2020, Springer Nature B.V.