A Word-Analysis Study on Literature of Project Management in Span of Time

The current research aims to study  the terms in the literature of project management in span of time based on a word-analysis method.

The research applies word-analysis technique to automatically explore and describe the terms used in PM literature. An amount of 2170 journal were extracted from the International Journal of Project Management (IJPM). IJPM has the highest SJR index among the journals in the field of project management. The research analyze the papers of IJPM published during 1983-2016.

Ten top groups could be determined based on frequently used terms in PM. The prominent combined terms with the words management and organization are risk management, program management,   portfolio management, project organization, organizational learning, and organizational culture. The emerging terms of 2015 and 2016 are social network analysis, aerospace projects, transportation infrastructure    projects and social risk management. Four time phases in PM literature term development can be identified. Receiving new terms has been   decreasing in PM field since 2004. The term "organization" is the most frequently used term in the PM literature. Its use has increased in the span of time so its frequency percentage has increased from 21.3% in 1983-1995 to 30.7% in 1996-2005 and has finally amounted 35.1% in 2006-2016.

Conclustion: 

PM has experienced some maturity, but some scientific principles and theoretical foundations for the content are missing. Scientometric methods make it possible to identify recently emerged terms, less used terms and saturated terms. This enables us to determine the  topics of future research projects and thus to close the current gaps.