Analyzing the Academic Research Trends by Using University Digital Resources: A Bibliometric Study of Electronic Commerce in China

Abstract

Technology plays a vital role in every field of life especially in business and education. Electronic commerce (EC) begins in the year of 1991 right after internet was introduced for commercial use [1]. It is known to be the 12th five years' plan (2011 to 2015) of Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The main objective of this study is to highlight the latest academic research trends on different topics or themes of EC in China by using university digital resources that is digital library. In order to obtain these latest academic trends, we have conducted bibliometric study and collected data from digital library for last six years i.e. from 2010 to 2015. The main motivation to choose this research topic and China was the worldwide reputation of this country, as top EC country in the world due to its high number of online users, and also impact of five years' Chinese government EC plan and policy. So, due to these facts we have established our research questions related to EC research trends in China to explore the answer of our Research Question: What are the latest research trends in the field of electronic commerce in China since 2010? As we wanted to know the answer thus we collected data through digital library and analyzed them fully to get a brief outlook about this EC trend. Result showed that a lot of research was already conducted on EC topics in China on different themes during the said duration. We can conclude that, this research trends showed that EC is a potential research field in China due to government five year EC policies or plan and to promote IT culture in Chinese society. This research provides guideline to the government IT policy makers and also academia researcher to be more focused on few topics or themes, where China is lacking behind, as leading EC country in the world.