Drawing the Scientific Collaboration Map of Intellectual Capital Field in the Web of Science

Drawing the scientific collaboration maps is very important for analyzing and identifying scientific collaborations in different subject areas of science. Therefore, the aim of this was to scientometrically analyze intellectual capital articles and draw the scientific collaboration map in this area.

This applied study was performed using a scientometric approach. The statistical population of the study included 2077 intellectual capital articles indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) citation database during 1985-2018. In addition, the VOSviewer software was used to draw the scientific collaboration maps of authors, countries, journals, organizations and keyword co-occurrences.

The findings showed that the publication and citation trend of the intellectual capital articles in the WoS was ascending; Dumay with 30 citations and 620 documents and Bontis with14 documents and 463 citations. The most cited authors, countries, universities, journals and keywords in this field were in the following order: Countries including United States (361 documents and 5745 citations), the United Kingdom (199 documents and 3492 citations) and Spain (171 documents and 1591 citations); Universities like Macquarie University of Australia (32 documents and 467 citations) and McMaster University of Canada (26 documents and 697 citations); Journals such as Intellectual Capital (127 documents), Knowledge Management Research and Practice (53 documents), Management Decision (881 citations) and Expert Systems with Applications (786 citations); and keywords of Capital (901 documents and 11229 citations), Intellectual (817 documents and 9041citations) and Knowledge (267 documents and 2763 citations). Moreover, the keyword co-occurrence map was more coherent than the co-citation and co-authorship map of the authors, universities, countries and journals.

Citation and scientific collaboration in the intellectual capital articles despite the upward trend is weak; therefore, policymakers in this field should make the necessary plans to improve and strengthen scientific collaboration.