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

Purpose 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. Design/methodology/approach The analysis focused on 187 papers published on JIC over a period of 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. Findings Four main streams of research on JIC emerged in 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. Research limitations/implications The study offers valid insights to the topics covered by the Journal of Intellectual Capital by identifying the main research gaps and trends, along with future research avenues. Originality/value Prior scholars mostly focused on systematic literature reviews, whilst the use of bibliometric methods generally seems to be a missing tile in the research domain. Also, none of the extant studies has focused on the Journal of Intellectual Capital with reference to the 2014-2018 period. The use of both bibliometric and systematic approaches to literature review delivered extremely fine-tuned results in terms of factors such as citations, contents and evolution of clusters over time.