As expatriate literature continues to grow, this review presents a quantitative analysis of the expatriate field, utilizing advances in bibliometric science mapping and social network analysis to examine 1650 articles published from 1998 to 2017. This approach offers a conceptual, relational and analytic framework for examining the foundations, structure, and interconnections of the expatriate field. The results of a co-occurrence keyword analysis show four interconnected clusters: 'strategic management of international organizations', 'expatriates' context', 'managing expatriates', and 'adapting to the local environment'. A bibliometric coupling analysis of articles published from 2015-2017 identifies the current research fronts, which centre on the topics of: 'expatriate adjustment', 'expatriates and multinational companies', 'careers', and 'methodological advances'. Using social network metrics, central keywords and articles are identified. Each cluster and research front is discussed. Three downloadable, searchable maps are provided, enabling further examination. The results offer a visual and structured overview of the field, and indicate both areas of research concentration and areas that are neglected.
Background
The COVID-19 pandemic is a global public health emergency and experts emphasize the need for rapid and a high degree of communication and interaction between all parties, in order for critical research to be implemented. We introduce a resource (website) that provides bibliometric analysis showing the current content and structure of the published literature. As new research is published daily, the analysis is regularly updated to show the status as the research field develops and matures.
Methods
Two bibliometric methods were employed, the first is a keyword co-occurrence analysis, based on published work available from PubMed. The second is a bibliometric coupling analysis, based on articles available through Scopus. The results are presented as clustered network graphs; available as interactive network graphs through the webpage.
Results
For research as of March 23rd, keyword co-occurrence analysis showed that research was organized in 4 topic clusters: “Health and pandemic management”, “The disease and its pathophysiology”, “Clinical epidemiology of the disease” and “Treatment of the disease”. Coupling analyses resulted in 4 clusters on literature that relates to “Overview of the new virus”, “Clinical medicine”, “On the virus” and “Reproduction rate and spread”.
Conclusion
We introduced a dynamic resource that will give a wide readership an overview of how the structure of the COVID-19 literature is developing. To illustrate what this can look like, we showed the structure as it stands three months after the virus was identified; the structure is likely to change as we progress to later stages of this pandemic.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.