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Digital transformation is a recognized research field that has emerged as digital technologies have been widely adopted in society, industries, and organizational management (Nadkarni & Prügl, 2021; Verhoef et al., 2021; Vial, 2019; Zaoui & Souissi, 2018). It is known that digital transformation arises at the intersection of products, services, and mediums based on digital technologies and processes of value transformation and creation (Schallmo & Williams, 2018). Since its inception, digital transformation has been characterized as a field of research that has continuous changes associated with the area in which it is relevant (Roth, 2019). Integrating extant literature, Vial (2019, p. 118) defined digital transformation as “a process that aims to improve an entity by triggering significant changes to its properties through combinations of information, computing, communication, and connectivity technologies.”
Given the outbreak of COVID-19 and the pandemic’s spread across the globe, digital transformation research has gained an increasingly established position of recognition among researchers associated with reliance on the use of digital technologies in socioeconomic activities. The field has attracted hundreds of researchers from diverse areas of the social sciences, including management (e.g., Daradkeh, 2021; Hensellek, 2020; Salman et al., 2022; Sigari et al., 2021), marketing (e.g., Kumbhojkar & Menon, 2022; Xiao et al., 2022), economics (e.g., Anttiroiko, 2021; Maji & Laha, 2020), technology (e.g., Lichtenthaler, 2021; Mydyti & Kadriu, 2021), education (e.g., Coral & Bernuy, 2022; Erskine et al., 2022), and society (e.g., Fan, 2018; Kazim, 2021; Mossberger & Tolbert, 2021; Tebepah, 2020). This has led to a widespread body of literature.
Researchers generally emphasize the importance of classifying the literature of a research area based on main trends. Bibliometrics is one of the most used techniques for this purpose. Bibliometric mapping, or science mapping, is an important research stream in bibliometrics. It monitors a scientific field, delimits its cognitive structure and evolution, and serves as a spatial representation of how disciplines, fields, researchers, and individual documents are related (Cobo et al., 2012). Despite the value of uncovering key elements in a specific field of interest, bibliometric studies in the field of digital transformation are scarce. Therefore, the aim of this article is to provide an overview of digital transformation research based on bibliometric mapping.
To accomplish this task, the authors conducted bibliographic mapping in this field using VOSviewer, Harzing’s Publish or Perish, and SciMAT for relevant evaluation and visualization of the bibliographic materials. The analysis focuses on researchers, research topics, publications, journals, countries, and institutions. The work uses a series of bibliometric indicators like productivity, citations, H-index values, and total link strength (TLS) values. The graphical analysis conveys coauthorship, cooccurrence of keywords, evolution of the research topics, and network of influential researchers.
The current study seeks answers to the following questions in the field of digital transformation:
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What is the status of collaboration among researchers?
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What is the distribution and trend of keywords?
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Who are the most influential researchers?
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Which are the most influential publications?
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Which are the most influential journals?
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Which are the most influential countries and institutions?