Business Intelligence & Analytics in Accounting studies: A 20-year Bibliometric Visualisation

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the business intelligence and analytics (BI&A) research trends in accounting studies. The review includes an assessment of the thematic evolution of BI&A over 20 years' duration. Published articles that combine BI&A, Accounting, and Audit keywords were searched from the Web of Science (WoS) database. Biblioshiny from the Bibliometrix R Package was utilised to analyse 320 articles published between 2002 and 2022. The review indicates that articles with BI&A themes have grown gradually within those two decades. Nevertheless, there is a sharp increase in the number of articles published in 2021, with a linear trend line predicting growth at the end of 2023. Publications for these articles were mostly from the USA, covering almost half of the publications for the past twenty years. Notably, the BI&A article that received the highest citations is an article written in 2020 with a focus on managerial accounting. WoS database was used to investigate BI&A from multiple angles in accounting studies. This paper adds to the knowledge as this is one of the first attempts to decipher the research streams that, through time, have prepared the way for the junction of Big Data Analytics and management domains.