What do we know about zakat literature? A bibliometric review

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to develop a meaningful single-source reference for Islamic economics and finance scholars concerning zakat intellectual structure published in journals indexed by the Scopus database. Design/methodology/approach The bibliometric method is used to describe and analyze the evolution of publication structure and its various co-relations such as co-citation, co-authorship and bibliographical coupling. Findings The authors discuss the influential and conceptual aspects of the published literature on zakat. An interesting finding is that few papers have received more than 50 citations. The analysis revealed that the Journal of Islamic Accounting and Business Research is the most cited source. Nevertheless, the list of the eight most cited papers reflects that research in this field is still dearth. Further, the authors find that zakat is discussed within the context of religion, its institutional framework, its role to eradicate poverty and distribution management of zakat. The authors also identify and present 14 research directions that will further stimulate scholarly work in the zakat field. Research limitations/implications The study confines on English papers and reviews published in journals indexed by the Scopus database only; hence, the study is representative of the moderate and high-quality papers published in this area of knowledge. Practical implications Researchers envision that this bibliometric study will complement meta-analysis and qualitative structured literature reviews as a method of reviewing and evaluating the scientific literature of this study area; thus, this may help researchers for futuristic research directions. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to tackle the zakat area from a bibliometric aspect. The authors believe that this will help scholars and researchers to stand on firm bases regarding the scientific development of this area of study.

A Bibliometric Analysis of Research on Zakat: Past Trends and Future Directions

“…Therefore, this paper differs from those previous studies in several ways. Firstly, this study re-examines previous studies (Ab Rahman et al, 2021;Alshater et al, 2021;Yusuf & Yerima, 2020) with more precise keywords in finding the articles. Second, this research will disclose the emerging trends of research based on keyword occurrences.…”

“…More recently, Alshater et al (2021) analysed 224 selected documents from the Scopus database using RStudio and Vosviewer which the word "zakat" appeared in the title only. As in previous studies, they are analysed, such as the co-authorships, citations, and keywords analysis.…”

“…Likewise, research in zakat area specifically increased. Some do research generally focused on the area of the development of zakat literature (Ab Rahman et al, 2021;Alshater et al, 2021;Johari et al, 2014;Yusuf & Yerima, 2020), and more specifically on zakat accounting (Uyob, 2020), zakat and technology (Nailah & Rusydiana, 2020), zakat in ASEAN (Niswah et al, 2020), and zakat in Indonesian journals (Firmansyah et al, 2020).…”

Islamic accounting research between 1982 and 2020: a hybrid review

“…Many papers within the broad Islamic economics and finance adopted the bibliometric approach in their studies. For instance, Alshater et al (2021aAlshater et al ( , 2021bAlshater et al ( , 2021c used the bibliometric method to identify research gaps in the existing Islamic finance literature and presented 24 future research directions. Alshater et al identify the leading academic authors, journals, institutions and countries associated with Islamic finance.…”

“…To work around this and have an adequate size, we relied on the Scopus database. Additionally, the Scopus interface is easy to use with various options to refine and export the data (Alshater et al, 2021a(Alshater et al, , 2021b(Alshater et al, , 2021cHassan et al, 2021aHassan et al, , 2021bHassan et al, , 2021c.…”