Journal of Intellectual Capital: a review of emerging themes and future trends

This article aims to provide a bibliometric and systematic literature analysis of studies published in the Journal of Intellectual Capital (JIC) from 2014 to 2018 in order to highlight emerging themes and future trends. The analysis focused on 187 papers published in the JIC over five years. A scientometric approach to data mining enabled the detection of patterns in the dataset. Precisely, the investigation was conducted by integrating a bibliometric analysis on VOSviewer with a systematic literature review. Four main streams of research have emerged in the JIC during the years of the analysis: reporting and disclosure of intellectual capital; intellectual capital research in universities, education and public sector; knowledge management; intellectual capital, financial performance, and market value. The study offers compelling insights into the topics covered by the Journal of Intellectual Capital by identifying the main research gaps and trends along with future research avenues. Prior scholars mostly focused on systematic literature reviews, while the use of bibliometric methods generally seems to be a missing tile in the research domain. Also, none of the extant studies have focused on the Journal of Intellectual Capital regarding the 2014 to 2018 period. The use of both bibliometric and systematic approaches to literature review delivered remarkably fine-tuned results in terms of factors such as citations, contents, and evolution of clusters over time.