Bibliometric analysis of ecopreneurship using VOSviewer and RStudio Bibliometrix, 1989-2019

Purpose This article offers a bibliometric analysis and explores the relationships among the documents on ecopreneurship by using relational techniques. The results highlight the publication trends; most cited documents, top contributing authors, countries and institutions with highest productivity and most contributing journals to the research field. Design/methodology/approach Initially, 216 documents were retrieved from the Thompson Reuters Web of Science Core Collection database with three document types: articles, review and book review. All the documents were considered for the analysis. Then VOSviewer and bibliometric analysis using R with an inbuilt utility Biblioshiny were used together for co-word analysis, co-citation network analysis, generating collaboration networks and also generating a unique three-field plot to analyze the evolution of a research field. Findings The results highlight the publication trends: most cited documents, top contributing authors, countries and institutions with highest productivity and most contributing journals to the research field. The network analysis of co-authorship, co-citation, keyword co-occurrence and bibliographic coupling reveals most prominent relationships between authors, documents, co-cited references, sources and countries for the available documents on the research field. Research limitations/implications The study helps not only in expansion of knowledgebase on the research topic but also in understanding the evolution of the ecopreneurship to provide research support further in this area. Originality/value Ecopreneurship is an emerging field of research connecting ecology and entrepreneurship together, making it a potential research area. The contributions made to this research field from 1989 to 2019 serve as a core for conducting this analysis. The study is an effort to help in coordinating research network across countries, authors and affiliating universities.