A contemporary bibliometric analysis of the sharing economy literature

Abstract

The study deployed an evaluative bibliometric analysis of contemporary literature on the topic of sharing economy indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) and/or Scopus within the fields of economics, business and management to provide an objective insight into its academic structure. Also, a comparative analysis of WoS and Scopus databases was conducted with the intention to examine the importance of both index databases concerning the investigated issue. Using a data-driven analysis, geographical distribution, the level of dispersion of papers among journals, the most frequently researched topics, the most influential authors, papers and scientific journals of the sharing economy knowledge within the predefined research field were determined. Comparative analysis of WoS and Scopus databases revealed that Scopus is a more comprehensive, but not more significant source of the sharing economy knowledge than WoS database, which itself could be characterized as an outstanding subset of Scopus.