Predicting the future of project management research

Although there has been much recent research on Project Management (PM), this research field is still relatively very young with many aspects still to be uncovered. Studies of the present literature have documented that, as no surprise, new research topics and emerging knowledge domains within this research field continue to appear at a rapid pace. This study aims to predict, based on a quantitative approach, the potential research areas that could appear in the foreseeable future of PM research. As carriers of PM knowledge entities, this study utilised different keywords that had been extracted from all publications of a reputed PM journal over a period of five years (i.e. 2009-2013). By applying the quantitative approach on this research dataset, this study made a projection about the future potential PM research topics. This projection will bring a competitive advantage to PM stakeholders by choosing a suitable field for investment, help aspiring PM researchers to choose a promising topic, and guide PM funding agencies as well as policy makers in distributing available research funds. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.