Technological Forecasting & Social Change 140 (2019) 194–220

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Technological Forecasting & Social Change

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/techfore

Knowledge management: A global examination based on bibliometric T

analysis
Magaly Gaviria-Marina,c, , José M. Merigób,d, Hugo Baier-Fuentesc
⁎

a
Department of Business Administration, University of Barcelona, 08034 Barcelona, Spain
b
Department of Management Control and Information Systems, School of Economics and Business, University of Chile, 08330015 Santiago, Chile
c
Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción, 4070129 Concepción, Chile
d
School of Systems, Management and Leadership, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney, 81 Broadway, Ultimo 2007,
Sydney, NSW, Australia

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: Knowledge management (KM) is a field of research that has gained wide acceptance in the scientific community
Knowledge management and management literature. This article presents a bibliometric overview of the academic research on KM in the
Bibliometrics business and management areas. Various bibliometric methods are used to perform this overview, including
Web of Science performance analysis and science mapping of the KM field. The performance analysis uses a series of biblio-
metric indicators, such as the h-index, productivity and citations. In addition, the VOSviewer software is used to
map the bibliographic material. Science mapping uses co-citations and the concurrency of keywords. References
were obtained from the Web of Science database. We identified and classified the most relevant research in the
field according to journals, articles, authors, institutions and countries. The results show that research in this
field has increased significantly in the last ten years and that the USA is the most influential country in all aspects
in this field. It is important to consider, however, that science continues to advance in this and in all fields and
that data rapidly change over time. Therefore, this paper fulfills an informational role that shows that most of the
fundamental research of KM is in business and management areas.

1. Introduction three stages or generations (Tzortzaki and Mihiotis, 2014). Serenko

(2013) notes that each generation is based on previous ideas, and
Based on the assertion of the important role of knowledge in the therefore, the development of the KM field has been cumulative. The
development of business economics and productivity (Drucker, 1968; same author states that a fourth generation remains to be developed
Polanyi, 1967), multiple studies and practices have been developed and should address the complexities of the knowledge domain, thus
around knowledge. Among the topics developed is that of KM, which leading to new KM metaphors, paradigms and tools (for more in-
has become a topic of general interest and attraction in the field of formation about the development of the KM field generations, see
business management. Indeed, KM is a relatively young discipline that Serenko (2013)).
is considered to be an effective source for determining the strategic Despite the progress observed during the field's developmental
direction of and developing competitive advantages within a company. years, several authors note that the field remains in an embryonic stage,
From this perspective, KM has attracted significant attention from lacking both a common consensus on future lines of research and
academics and practitioners who seek to make use of its fundamental conceptual robustness (Serenko and Dumay, 2015a; Tzortzaki and
concepts (Serenko et al., 2011). That is how professionals highlight the Mihiotis, 2014). However, the literature has been emphasizing the
importance of KM in the organizational success (Staples et al., 2001) significant benefits derived from appropriate knowledge management
and researchers see the great potential offered by this discipline to unify (Hassan et al., 2016). As a consequence, KM has developed with the
various fields of research (Holsapple and Wu, 2008). characteristics of a well-defined scientific field, exhibiting a rich aca-
Although the recent theory of KM only began to develop in the early demic structure to encourage research in the field. For example, KM has
1960s, it has deep historical roots (Lambe, 2011). In the literature, it is its own journal classification system and many exclusive journals
well recognized that the development of the KM field is divided into (Serenko and Bontis, 2009), among which we can find several

⁎
Corresponding author at: Department of Business Administration, University of Barcelona, 08034 Barcelona, Spain.
E-mail addresses: mgaviria@ucsc.cl (M. Gaviria-Marin), jmerigo@fen.uchile.cl (J.M. Merigó), hbaier@ucsc.cl (H. Baier-Fuentes).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2018.07.006
Received 24 March 2017; Received in revised form 8 May 2018; Accepted 4 July 2018
Available online 03 August 2018
0040-1625/ © 2018 Published by Elsevier Inc.
M. Gaviria-Marin et al. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 140 (2019) 194–220

Fig. 1. Important steps on the development of knowledge management.

theoretical developments (Serenko et al., 2007) and scientometric stu- Merino et al. (2006) develop a bibliometric analysis of the Technova-
dies (Gu, 2004a; Harman and Koohang, 2005; Nonaka and Peltokorpi, tion to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the journal. Merigó et al.
2006; Serenko et al., 2010; Serenko and Bontis, 2004). In addition, the (2018) develops a bibliometric study of the 50th anniversary of In-
KM field has a wide network of collaborators and researchers grouped formation Science. Recently, Gaviria-Marin et al. (2018) analyze all
in different international organizations. For example, the Association of publications of the Journal of Knowledge Management with biblio-
Knowledge Management in Society and Organization (AGecSO) is an metric techniques. In addition, the different scientific fields of Business
association of Francophone researchers that is in full development and and Management have published bibliometric studies, for example, the
is currently located in France and Quebec. AGecSO, through the GecSO field of innovation (Merigó et al., 2016), entrepreneurship (Sorheim
International Conference, annually convenes an important number of and Landstrom, 2001) and management (Podsakoff et al., 2008), among
researchers who study this interesting field. Likewise, the International several others. Even these bibliometric techniques have also been ap-
Association for Knowledge Management (IAKM) acts as a meeting point plied to specific areas within a given field of research, including service
and reference point that collects an abundant list of international innovation (Sakata et al., 2013), technological entrepreneurship
conferences on KM, including but not limited to, the International (Ratinho et al., 2015) and international entrepreneurship (Baier-
Forum on Knowledge Asset Dynamics (IFKAD), European Conference Fuentes et al., 2018) among others. In the KM field, many authors have
on Knowledge Management (ECKM), and Annual Conference on performed studies of this type. For example, Gu (2004b) conducted a
Knowledge Management (ACKM). All of this structure has resulted in study that characterized dynamic publications on global knowledge
the accelerated growth of the body of literature related to the KM field management (KM) using data collected from the WoS. In the same year,
(Lambe, 2011). Fig. 1 summarizes some important milestones that have Gu (2004a) presented and analyzed the similarities and differences in
occurred in the different stages of the development of the KM field. the performance of information management (IM) and knowledge
From an academic point of view, it is important that the material management (KM) studies indexed in several bibliographic databases.
published in a specific research field, such as KM, be classified so that Moreover, Harman and Koohang (2005) analyzed citations to collect
one can follow all of the field's advances and trends (Merigó et al., data on the annual frequency and topical emphasis of books and doc-
2016). One way to perform such a classification is through biblio- toral dissertations on KM published during the period from 1983 to
metrics, which guides academics toward a discipline's most influential 2005. Nonaka and Peltokorpi (2006) reviewed and positioned the top
studies (Godin, 2006). In recent years, computer science and the In- 20 KM articles most frequently cited in management journals. Qiu and
ternet have facilitated the development of bibliometric analysis, which Lv (2014) generated a global bibliometric study of the field of knowl-
has become an increasingly popular technique among researchers (Ding edge management. Finally, Serenko, together with other researchers,
et al., 2014). Bibliometrics has enabled the study of a wide range of conducted several similar studies (Serenko et al., 2009; Serenko and
journals and scientific fields. In the case of journals, many of them have Dumay, 2015a, 2015b). Note that these studies have focused on ana-
published a bibliometric analysis of the publications of the journal, lyzing either a limited number of articles in the field or exclusive
through the special issue of their anniversary. For example, García- journals in the KM field, overlooking published literature in journals

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focused on organizational issues. Therefore, the specificity of these Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995) that classify the importance of activities in
studies has left an important gap in the field by excluding several stu- knowledge management processes (Davenport and Prusak, 1998;
dies that emphasize that KM is an important strategy that influences Mertins et al., 2001; Mishra and Uday Bhaskar, 2011). According to
organizational competitiveness (Hassan et al., 2016). Recently, Bhatt (2001), knowledge management must be an integral process,
Akhavan et al. (2016) performed a bibliometric study that attempted to which interacts between information technologies (IT), people and
extend the range of the analytical dimensions. However, this study and techniques in order to take advantage of knowledge (Bhatt, 2001). In
most of the previous bibliometric studies almost completely avoid the this sense, IT plays a fundamental role in the appearance of KM (Maier,
complementarity of different modern bibliometric tools, such as per- 2004) since they influence the flow of knowledge in a company (Ernst
formance analysis and science mapping (Cobo et al., 2011a). and Kim, 2002) and are considered to be a tool that favors the activities
Therefore, based on the background presented, the main aim of this of these processes. Some knowledge management processes have been
study is to complement previous work and provide a broad quantitative identified in the literature. For example, authors such as Wiig (1997,
and qualitative view of KM research with a focus on the organization by 1993) and Alavi and Leidner (2001) state that the knowledge man-
using the main bibliometric procedures, namely, performance analysis agement processes of an organization are backed by the creation,
and science mapping (Cobo et al., 2011a). To meet this aim, a wide set transfer and use of knowledge. Tiwana and Amrit (2000) suggest ac-
of references related to the KM field is obtained from the Web of Sci- quisition, sharing and utilization. Other researchers highlight the ap-
ence (WoS) and the bibliometric procedures are applied to different plication, integration and spillover of knowledge as important activities
units of analysis, such as authors, journals, universities and countries. in knowledge management (Alavi and Leidner, 2001; Choi et al., 2010;
In particular, in the performance analysis we use different basic bib- Kayworth and Leidner, 2003; Park and Kim, 2006; Sarin and
liometric indicators, such as the number of publications and the number McDermott, 2003; Wang et al., 2017). Therefore, when searching for
of citations received. In addition, we use the h-index as a measure that bibliographic records in the WoS, the previously mentioned concepts in
combines the number of publications and citations. The above analyses the KM literature are used as keywords. In this way, the Boolean op-
are complemented by the development of a science mapping analysis erator (OR), command of the quotation marks and asterisk are used to
that is constructed using different techniques, such as bibliographic search the following keywords in a single search: knowledge manage-
coupling, co-citation analysis (Small, 1973) and co-occurrence of key- ment (“knowledge manage*”), organizational knowledge (“organization*
words analysis (Callon et al., 1983), among others. Co-occurrence of knowledge*”), knowledge acquisition (“knowledge acquisiti*”), knowl-
keywords allows us to quantify and visualize the thematic evolution of edge creation (“knowledge creati*”), knowledge integration (“knowledge
the KM research field. To perform this analysis, we use a longitudinal integrati*”), knowledge transfer (“knowledge transfer*”), knowledge
frame according to the different stages of development of the KM field. sharing (“knowledge shar*”), knowledge diffusion (“knowledge diffus*”),
In developing these bibliometric procedures, we offer a fairly complete knowledge spillover (“knowledge spill*”), knowledge use (“knowledge
overview of research that focuses on knowledge management of orga- use*”) and knowledge application (“knowledge applicat*”).
nizations. The search was conducted between June and September 2016, and
This work is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the metho- only documents published between 1961 and 2015 were taken into
dology. Section 3 presents the results, which are organized as follows: account. This approach guaranteed the inclusion of publications in all
Section 3.1 examines the bibliometric performance analyses of journals, of the field's stages of development (Tzortzaki and Mihiotis, 2014).
articles, authors, institutions and countries. Section 3.2 presents the Based on these criteria, 42,795 bibliographical references were ob-
science mapping analysis of KM field. Finally, Section 4 discusses this tained. It is important to note that the most productive areas in this
work's main conclusions. field are computer science (with 16,120 documents, representing
37.66% of the overall results) and business economics (with 13,166
2. Methodology documents, representing 30.76% of the overall results). There are
several disciplines that publish in the KM field. It should also be noted
Although a large number of databases group global research, the that the results obtained correspond to all publications that used any or
present study considers bibliographic records obtained from the Web of some of the keywords that we used in the search process. It is important
Science (WoS), which belongs to Clarivate Analytics. More specifically, to note that research focused on KM appeared in many scientific areas,
this study uses the WoS Core Collection. The WoS is a digital biblio- but in this study, given that we focused on KM at the organizational
metric platform that is internationally recognized among researchers level, we selected research from the areas of business economics. By
for having high quality standards (Merigó et al., 2015b) and has be- using this limit, we intend to perform an approximation of the concepts
come one of the main tools for both searching and evaluating different associated with knowledge management processes. In addition, to
types of publications and journals (Thelwall, 2008). Bibliometric re- evaluate only research studies, the results were filtered to only take
searchers consider the WoS to be a relevant database because it pro- articles, reviews, notes and letters into account (Merigó et al., 2016),
vides a set of metadata that is essential for this type of analysis, in- thus obtaining a sample of 6155 studies. In any case, to show the up-
cluding abstracts, references, number of citations, lists of authors, dated global volume of studies focused on KM available in the WOS by
institutions, countries and the journal impact factor (Carvalho et al., research areas, Table 1 is presented. It should be noted that the results
2013). This metadata set also includes a wide range of documents from may vary over time (Cobo et al., 2011a).
various research fields. According to Merigó and Yang (2016), the WoS The records corresponding to these results were analyzed using
contains > 15,000 journals and 50,000,000 classified documents in 251 bibliometric analysis. According to Noyons et al. (1999), bibliometrics
categories and 150 thematic research areas. combines two main procedures: performance analysis and science
To perform a search within the WoS database, key words are se- mapping. Bibliometric performance analysis uses a wide range of
lected to filter the information. The criteria for these key words are techniques, including word frequency analysis, citation analysis, and
based on existing studies that identify KM as a dynamic set of activities counting publications by country, universities, research group or au-
that improve a company's knowledge flows. Several researchers have thors (Thelwall, 2008). However, these techniques are now com-
tried to classify KM's main activities (Park and Kim, 2006). One of the plemented by other measures and indicators, such as the g-index
most cited works is that of Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995). However, (Egghe, 2006) and hg-index (Alonso et al., 2009) or h-index (Hirsch,
models have emerged (Hedlund, 1994; Kogut and Zander, 1992; 2005). The last – the h-index - is a recent, very popular indicator among

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Table 1
KM references in different areas.
Source: Based on WoS 2017. Note that the acronyms of all the indicators are defined in Appendix 1.
Phase 1 Phase 2

Preliminary results = 44,193 Results considering only papers, reviews, notes and letters = 23,494

R Areas TP Areas TP

1 Computer science 16,753 Business Economics 7502

2 Business economics 13,537 Computer Science 6472
3 Engineering 9424 Engineering 3751
4 Information science library science 4426 Information Science Library Science 2609
5 Operations research management science 3644 Operations Research Management Science 1643
6 Education educational research 3497 Education Educational Research 1531
7 Psychology 2100 Psychology 1419
8 Social sciences other topics 1307 Environmental Sciences Ecology 1072
9 Environmental sciences ecology 1289 Public Administration 845
10 Public administration 1242 Health Care Sciences Services 675
11 Telecommunications 1068 Social Sciences Other Topics 614
12 Health care sciences services 870 Geography 565
13 Automation control systems 858 Public Environmental Occupational Health 435
14 Medical informatics 748 Medical Informatics 427
15 Geography 610 Science Technology Other Topics 339
16 Mathematics 525 Nursing 280
17 Public environmental occupational health 497 Mathematics 245
18 Materials science 494 Automation Control Systems 219
19 Science technology other topics 466 General Internal Medicine 219
20 Robotics 346 Agriculture 213

researchers that combines the number of publications and number of but not limited to, the citation ratio of articles (citations/articles) and
citations into a single indicator.1 This indicator can be applied to sev- number of articles above a citation threshold (Merigó et al., 2015b).
eral units of analysis (for example, authors, articles, journals, countries, Performance analysis also presents other indicators that usually arise
universities, etc.), and its interpretation is simple. In this manner, for an from combining the previously mentioned indicators, such as the
analysis unit that has an h-index equal to N, N documents were cited at number of articles in which papers produced by the author are cited
least N times (Hirsch, 2005). For example, if a university has an h-index (ACKM) or the average citations per article of the author in the KM
of 80, then the university has 80 documents that received at least 80 research (PCKM), among others. Other indicators that are included are
citations. It should also be noted that the value of this indicator can include the dimensions of temporality (Q1, Q2, …Qn) that allow the
change over time. The popularity of this indicator is related to the publication behaviors of the different scientific authors to be observed
advantages that several authors have indicated in the literature. For over time. Finally, this analysis is applied to units of analysis that
example, Costas and Bordons (2007) noted that the objectivity of the correspond to journals, articles, authors, institutions and countries, thus
indicator can play an important role in evaluating the performance of a providing a better representation of the KM literature.
scientific actor. Vanclay (2007) noted that the h-index is a robust in- Science Mapping is another main procedure of bibliometrics and is a
dicator that is insensitive to a set of poorly cited papers, and therefore, spatial representation of how different scientific actors are related to
it represents the performance of a scientific field well. Likewise, one another (Small, 1999). In this sense, the objective of this metho-
Thelwall (2008) noted that the h-index is an easily calculable and in- dology is to show the structural and dynamic aspects of scientific re-
tuitively understandable indicator. As the advantages of the h-index search (Börner et al., 2003; Cobo et al., 2012). The development of
have been illustrated, some limitations have been mentioned that must computer technologies and software has allowed this methodology to
be taken into account. Some authors have noted that the h-index is be perfected and positioned as an interesting methodological option to
incapable of comparing researchers from different disciplines. Others, evaluate the structures and networks of science. Among some of the
such as Kelly and Jennions (2006), noted that this indicator is not most popular academic software tools are IN-SPIRE (Wise, 1999), Ci-
adequate to compare researchers at different stages of their careers. teSpace II (Chen, 2006), VantagePoint (Porter and Cunningham, 2005),
Finally, Egghe (2006) noted that this type of composite indicator does VOSviewer (van Eck and Waltman, 2010) and SciMAT (Cobo et al.,
not benefit researchers who have extremely cited documents and 2012), among others. These software programs have different char-
moderate productivity since they would have a similar or equal h-index acteristics and operate based on different algorithms. However, these
as researchers with moderate or highly cited papers. programs use the same techniques to build the network structure of
These limitations, however, can be overcome by evaluating the field different analysis units. Among the most used techniques are co-citation
of research using more than one indicator (Martin, 1996). Therefore, to analysis (Small, 1973) and the co-occurrence of key words in docu-
provide a broader performance analysis, this section of bibliometrics ments (Callon et al., 1983). Note that co-citation analysis studies the
includes both traditional and complementary bibliometric indicators. structure of a field using pairs of documents that are commonly cited
More specifically, this study classifies records according to the h-index, together. This technique is used in units of analysis, such as authors,
the number of citations and their productivity, as determined by the references and journals. Likewise, the co-occurrence of keywords
number of publications. Other indicators are also considered, including (Callon et al., 1983) uses the most important words or keywords of
documents to study the conceptual structure of a research field. It
should be noted that, in this present study, we used the VOS viewer
1 software to perform co-citation analysis of the different units of ana-
The original definition of the h-index, as proposed by Hirsch (2005), was:
lysis. Likewise, the co-occurrence of keywords is also analyzed by
“A scientist has index h if h of his or her Np papers have at least h citations each
and the other (Np − h) papers have ≤h citations each.” taking into account a longitudinal framework to observe the trends of

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3750
3500
3250
3000
2750
2500
2250
2000
1750
1500
1250
1000
750
500
250
0
1961
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
Fig. 2. Number of publications on knowledge management. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure, the reader is referred to the web version of this
article.)

the KM field over time. Finally, it should be noted that the graphs are Table 4).
represented by a network of elements in which the size of the circle Another way of analyzing the evolution of KM publications is ac-
varies according to the importance of the element, while the network cording to the productivity ratio, which is specific to the various re-
connections represent the closeness of the link between elements. The search areas. As discussed, our study analyzes academic publications
locations of the circles and colors are used to cluster the items. framed in the areas of business and management. The ratio of pub-
lications in these areas has increased significantly, demonstrating the
3. Results transversality and importance that KM offers to other scientific dis-
ciplines.
3.1. Performance bibliometric analysis According to Table 2, during the first 24 years studied (1961–1985),
for every 37 articles published in the KM field, 1 was published in the
In this section, we present a performance analysis based on the business and management areas. That is, 2.7% of publications in KM are
bibliometric indicators described above, such as the number of docu- related to organizational and business issues. However, this gap has
ments published, number of citations received, h-index of the different been narrowing significantly. Note, for example, that over the last
actors analyzed and various ratios obtained from these indicators. Note decade (2006–2015), for every three publications, one was published in
that the acronyms of all of the indicators are defined in Appendix 1. the business and management areas. That is, 33.3% of the publications
in KM are on topics related to organizations and companies. In addition,
3.1.1. Publications and citations in KM research it is important to highlight the significant progress of the number of
First, we show the general aspects of the KM research field. Fig. 2 papers published in the areas of business and management. For ex-
shows the evolution of publications related to the KM field over time. In ample, there were 13 times as many publications in 1996–2005 com-
this figure, the green bars indicate the overall number of publications pared to the previous decade (1986–1995). This increase can be at-
per year in the WoS, 42,795 overall. The blue bars show the evolution tributed to the appearance of papers that are considered to be
of academic documents (articles, reviews, letters and notes) in the WoS, foundational in the KM field and that are now the field's most-cited
23,128 overall. Finally, the red bars represent the evolution of KM re- works (Tzortzaki and Mihiotis, 2014).
cords from the business and management areas, 6155 overall. These re- In this sense, one way of highlighting the importance and influence
sults represent our work's primary objective, which is to include pub- of a field of research is through the number of citations of published
lications not only from KM-exclusive journals but also from the KM works within its area. To evaluate the citation rate of the KM field,
literature published in journals that focus on all types of business or- Table 3 presents the general citation structure of all academic research
ganization. According to Fig. 2, we clearly observe that the KM litera- obtained from the Core Collection of WoS. These investigations are
ture has been growing significantly in the areas of business and man- classified based on several thresholds related to the number of citations
agement. There are several reasons for this growth. First, an increasing and according to the generations or stages of development that the KM
number of researchers worldwide have been highlighting the im- field has experienced. In addition, the percentage of papers in each
portance of KM in organizations (Garavelli et al., 2004). Second, an section is included. Accordingly, Table 3 shows that only 3 articles have
increasing number of journals have emerged at the intersection of the received > 3000 citations, 5.09% of articles have received equal to
fields of KM and organizational problems, including but not limited to, or > 100 citations, and 75.5% of articles have received fewer than 25
the JKM, KMRP, JIKM and KPM (note that the acronyms are defined in citations.

Table 2 3.1.2. The most productive and influential journals in KM research

Evolution of research in the area of business and management. Articles on KM issues are published in a wide range of journals. This
Source: Own elaboration based on WoS 2015. field has progressed remarkably and therefore has a wide structure of
Year TPKM TPKM-BM Ratio %km academic resources, including a series of dedicated journals. In addi-
tion, the theoretical frameworks of the field of KM research are in-
Period 1 1961–1985 73 2 37 2,7% creasingly used to explain certain business phenomena, such as in-
Decade 1 1986–1995 1192 86 14 7,14%
novation and performance (Lai et al., 2014; López-Nicolás and Meroño-
Decade 2 1996–2005 5508 1092 5 20%
Decade 3 2006–2015 16,355 4975 3 33,3% Cerdán, 2011). Therefore, a wide variety of journals from the business
23,128 6155 100% and management areas publish KM-based articles to explain their
phenomena of study. To classify journals and their publications in KM

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Table 3
General citation structure by generation of knowledge management research in WoS.
Source: Own elaboration based on WoS 2015.
Number of citations TP - first generation TP - second generation TP - third generation TP % of papers
(1962–1990) (1991–2000) (2001–2016)

≥3000 citations – 4 – 4 0,06%

≥1000 citations – 13 9 22 0,36%
≥500 citations – 19 24 43 0,70%
≥250 citations – 28 94 122 1,98%
≥100 citations – 64 305 369 6,00%
≥50 citations 1 51 528 580 9,42%
≥25 citations 1 50 835 886 14,39%
≤25 citations 8 159 3788 3955 64,26%
0 citations – 20 154 174 2,83%
Total of papers 10 408 5737 6155 100%

field, Table 4 presents the field's 50 most productive and influential journals has published 4.03% of all KM articles. A fourth set of journals
journals. It should be noted that the journals are ordered according to includes journals grouped according to their orientation toward human
their productivity. In the event of a tie, the h-index of KM documents in resources (HRJ), which have published 2.6% of all KM articles. Finally,
journals was taken into account. one group was classified as other journals within the business and
According to Table 4, the productivity index (TPKM) and percen- management (OPJ) sections. The journals in this group have published
tage of KM publications in journals (%APKM) indicate that the JKM is 20.1% of all KM articles. It is important to note that based on this
the most productive journal in the field, with 404 articles. In ac- classification, 4142 KM publications were analyzed, which corresponds
cordance according to the percentage of KM publications, two jour- to 67.3% of all KM publications. These classifications are presented in
nals—the JKM and KMRP—stand out, with 92.45% and 79.08%, re- Table 5.
spectively. It is important to note that both of these journals are It should be noted that the number of publications was grouped by
dedicated exclusively to KM. Other important journals in the field are journal and period of time and that, at the end of the table, the acro-
the IJTM and RPC. In addition, the most influential journals in this field nyms of the columns are defined. Also, the journals within each group
are OSC and SMJ, both with a volume of > 20,000 citations each. This are ordered by the h-index, which represents both their productivity
large number of citations is explained because these journals include and influence in the field.
several of the most cited articles. Note, for example, that SMJ and OSC From a more specific perspective and related to each group of
have 12 and 8 articles, respectively, with > 500 citations. Another journals, in the group of the most productive journals, JKM and KMRP
journal that stands out in this sense is RPC. Despite having a low per- stand out as being exclusively dedicated to the field. Although JKM has
centage of publications in KM (7.75%), this journal has an h-index of 49 been publishing since 1997, its publications began to appear only in the
and several publications with a high number of citations. penultimate five-year period (Q4). It is possible that several of this
Another important aspect to analyze is the total number of citations journal's references may have been overlooked. This phenomenon can
in Knowledge Management (TCKM). Two journals stand out because they be explained by what bibliometrics defines as “missed citations”, which
are above the threshold of 20,000 citations. OSC has the largest number often occur in social sciences (Harzing and Alakangas, 2016). Another
of citations, with 21,748 citations, followed by SMJ, with 20,930 ci- factor that could also explain this phenomenon is the year that these
tations. A second group of journals has citations above the threshold of journals were indexed in the WoS. Nevertheless, it is important to note
5000 citations. Those journals include RPC, JIBS, JMS, MSC and MQY. that within this group of journals, IJTM has been publishing in-
All of the journals mentioned above have a fairly strong orientation crementally since Q1.
toward the specific topics of organizations and companies. It is also In relation to the older journals in this field, we note that RDM,
interesting to note that these journals are dedicated exclusively to the TFSC, ITEM, IMG and EJOR are among the leading journals that initiate
KM field, and although they have a high level of productivity, they are KM research. However, although these journals' production in the field
not sufficiently influential in the field, which may be a consequence of is incremental over time, none of them occupy the top positions of
the breadth of the concepts in the areas of business and management, productivity and influence.
along with researchers' tendencies to publish in journals with higher Interestingly, several of the major business and management jour-
quality indices (Norris and Oppenheim, 2007). nals (TMGJ) began to publish in the 1990s. The oldest journals in this
It is also interesting to analyze the evolution of publications that group are OSC, SMJ and MSC. These journals are also the most pro-
appeared in journals over time. The following analysis considers this ductive in the group and have increasingly accepted and published
evolution by taking into account a classification of journals based on works focused on KM.
both productivity and thematic orientation. We grouped the first three Among innovation journals, RPC and TCH stand out for both their
journals according to their productivity (MPRJ). These journals have high productivity in KM and because they have been publishing since
published 14.05% of all KM articles. A second group of journals in- 1991 (Q1). However, other journals, such as RDM, TFSC and ITEM,
cludes those ranked in the top 10 journals in business and management which have published KM articles since the earliest days of the field,
(TMGJ). These journals have published 12.32% of all KM articles. A have not been as prominent. Among the information system journals
third group of journals includes journals grouped according to their (ISYS), IMG stands out for its high productivity and influence. IMG and
orientation toward innovation (INNJ). These journals have published ISR stand out because of the length of time that they have published KM
13.8% of all KM articles. Subsequently, the journals were grouped with articles.
an orientation toward information systems (ISYS). This group of More recently, journals oriented toward human resources

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Table 4
The most productive journals in KM research.
Source: Elaborated from the WoS 2015.
R Journal TPKM HKM TAP TCKM ACKM PCKM %APKM ≥500 ≥200 ≥100 ≥50 < 50 T50 IF 5Y-IF

1 JKM 404 24 437 3052 1892 4,68 92,45 – – – 6 398 – 1,689 2,426
2 IJTM 247 21 1970 1938 1797 7,28 12,54 – – 2 2 243 – 0,867 0,861
3 KMRP 242 15 306 932 778 3,21 79,08 – – – – 242 – 0,595 0,994
4 RPC 225 49 2904 8737 6986 31,05 7,75 1 7 15 24 178 1 3,47 5,118
5 TCH 141 32 1900 3252 2834 20,1 7,42 – – 5 14 122 – 2,243 3,833
6 OSC 128 57 1486 21,748 15,423 120,49 8,61 8 11 21 19 69 10 3,36 6,137
7 SMJ 110 54 2323 20,930 13,580 123,45 4,74 12 14 14 17 53 12 3,38 5,972
8 IMG 107 28 2071 3053 2581 24,12 5,17 – 1 5 12 89 – 2,163 3,175
9 JIBS 105 42 2040 5123 3690 35,14 5,15 – 5 9 23 68 1 3,62 5,659
10 JBR 99 23 4341 1655 1612 16,28 2,28 – – 4 9 86 – 2,129 2,67
11 JMS 90 44 3096 5297 4571 50,79 2,91 – 3 13 25 49 – 4,131 6,497
12 IMM 89 21 2840 1652 1626 18,27 3,13 – 1 2 3 83 1 1,93 3,132
13 IBR 89 19 710 1038 934 10,49 12,54 – – 1 3 85 – 1,669 2,307
14 TFSC 87 18 3858 1041 1054 12,11 2,26 – 1 – 2 84 – 2,678 3,005
15 MSC 83 46 6370 8653 7065 85,12 1,3 3 11 15 10 44 3 2,741 3,728
16 IJHRM 83 19 2130 1339 1130 13,61 3,9 – 1 1 4 77 – 1,262 1,619
17 AJBM 82 6 1968 181 149 1,82 4,17 – – – – 0 – 1,105 1,105
18 MDC 81 14 1183 581 466 5,75 6,85 – – – – 81 – 1,134 1,868
19 SBE 74 19 1430 1293 1164 15,73 5,17 – – 2 6 66 – 1,795 2,318
20 MLG 73 22 1142 1162 1030 14,11 6,39 – – – 4 69 – 1,393 2,167
21 ITEM 70 18 2002 982 940 13,43 3,5 – – – 3 67 – 1,454 1,699
22 MISQ 68 40 1276 8246 6261 92,07 5,33 4 5 10 14 35 4 5,384 9,51
23 JTT 68 16 392 627 567 8,34 17,35 – – – 1 67 – 2,213 2,474
24 JPIM 66 25 1864 1638 1493 22,62 3,54 – – 3 8 55 – 2,086 3,178
25 RDM 66 20 1947 1138 1075 16,29 3,39 – – – 7 59 – 1,19 2,47
26 JMIS 64 27 734 3675 2937 45,89 8,72 1 4 5 6 48 1 3,025 3,775
27 JWB 63 19 744 1016 973 15,44 8,47 – – – 6 57 – 2,811 3,729
28 TASM 62 14 1043 817 825 13,31 5,94 – – 2 2 58 – 0,845 1,086
29 IJPM 58 14 737 459 407 7,02 7,87 – – – – 58 – 2,885 3,411
30 SRBS 56 12 1139 470 388 6,93 4,92 – – – 2 54 – 0,991 0,905
31 TQMBE 55 10 1116 356 307 5,58 4,93 – – – – 55 – 0,896 1,49
32 OST 54 26 2487 2756 2578 47,74 2,17 1 1 5 7 40 1 2,798 3,899
33 SIJ 51 9 1783 291 274 5,37 2,86 – – – 1 50 – 0,776 1,071
34 IIN 46 10 270 224 238 5,17 17,04 – – – – 46 – 0,87 1,677
35 LRP 45 23 4138 2296 2067 45,93 1,09 1 1 3 8 32 1 2,936 6,619
36 JETM 45 20 467 1362 1265 28,11 9,64 – 1 2 5 37 – 1,474 2,19
37 EJOR 45 15 15,843 653 676 15,02 0,28 – – 1 1 43 – 2,679 3,109
38 IJOPM 45 13 1591 463 460 10,22 2,83 – – – 1 44 – 2,252 2,935
39 BJM 44 18 697 872 870 19,77 6,31 – – 1 3 40 – 2,188 3,096
40 AMJ 43 31 3269 4806 4280 99,53 1,32 1 11 2 9 20 1 6,233 10,588
41 ISR 41 21 766 1795 1640 40 5,35 – 2 4 6 29 – 3,047 4,014
42 JSIS 41 20 463 1501 1364 33,27 8,86 – 1 2 3 35 – 2,595 3,486
43 JOM 40 25 715 1727 1416 35,4 5,59 – 1 3 14 22 – 4 8,229
44 ICC 40 16 697 834 881 22,03 5,74 – – 2 1 37 – 1,327 2,17
45 HRS 39 21 3365 1242 1180 30,26 1,16 – – 2 7 30 – 2,619 3,544
46 JORS 39 11 8230 119 399 10,23 0,47 – – – 1 38 – 1,225 1,386
47 HRM 38 16 1395 602 571 15,03 2,72 – – – 3 35 – 1,798 2,526
48 EMJ 38 8 367 203 230 6,05 10,35 – – – 1 37 – 1,437 1,702
49 JM 37 17 1592 1381 1443 39 2,32 – 1 2 7 27 – 6,051 10,48
50 JIT 36 15 674 818 807 22,42 5,34 – – 1 6 29 – 4,775 6,189

JKM, Journal of Knowledge Management; IJTM, International Journal of Technology Management; KMRP, Knowledge Management Research Practice; RPC,
Research Policy; TCH, Technovation; OSC, Organization science; SMJ, Strategic Management Journal; IMG, Information Management; JIBS, Journal of International
Business Studies; JBR, Journal of Business Research; JMS, Journal of Management Studies; IMM, Industrial Marketing Management; IBR, International Business
Review; TFSC, Technological Forecasting and Social Change; MSC, Management Science; IJHRM, International Journal of Human Resource Management; AJBM,
African Journal of Business Management; MDC, Management Decision; SBE, Small Business Economics; MLG, Management Learning; ITEM, IEEE Transactions on
Engineering Management; MISQ, Miss Quarterly; JTT, Journal of Technology Transfer; JPIM, Journal of Product Innovation Management; RDM, R D Management;
JMIS, Journal of Management Information Systems; JWB, Journal of World Business; TASM, Technology Analysis Strategic Management; IJPM, International Journal
of Project Management; SRBS, Systems Research and Behavioral Science; TQMBE, Total Quality Management Business Excellence; OST, Organization Studies; SIJ,
Service Industries Journal; IIN, Industry and Innovation; LRP, Long Range Planning; JETM, Journal of Engineering and Technology Management; EJOR, European
Journal of Operational Research; IJOPM, International Journal of Operations Production Management; BJM, British Journal of Management; AMJ, Academy of
Management Journal; ISR, Information Systems Research; JSIS, Journal of Strategic Information Systems; JOM, Journal of Operations Management; ICC, Industrial
and Corporate Change; HRS, Human Relations; JORS, Journal of The Operational Research Society; HRM, Human Resource Management; EMJ, European
Management Journal; JM, Journal of Management; JIT, Journal of Information Technology.

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Table 5
Temporal evolution by quinquenniums and journals in the KM field.
Source: Elaborated based on WoS 2015. The abbreviated name of the journal is in Table 4.

R Journal HKM TPKM TCKM Q5 Q4 Q3 Q2 Q1 OY JGT

1 JKM 24 404 3052 284 120 - - - -
2 IJTM 21 247 1938 39 103 54 50 1 - MPRJ
3 KMRP 15 242 932 152 90 - - - -
1 OSC 57 128 21748 51 37 28 8 4 -
2 SMJ 54 110 20930 42 29 20 14 5 -
3 MSC 46 83 8653 13 28 31 8 3 -
4 JMS 44 90 5297 23 42 17 7 1 -
5 JIBS 42 105 5123 46 41 12 6 - -
TMGJ
6 MISQ 40 68 8246 22 15 20 6 5 -
7 AMJ 31 43 4806 15 15 13 - - -
8 OST 26 54 2756 15 21 13 2 3 -
9 JM 17 37 1381 24 8 4 1 - -
10 ICC 16 40 834 16 17 7 - - -
1 RPC 49 225 8737 93 82 37 11 2 -
2 TCH 32 141 3252 42 52 35 11 1 -
3 JOM 25 40 1727 18 20 2 - - -
4 JPIM 25 66 1638 37 15 9 5 - -
5 RDM 20 66 1138 26 20 10 7 2 1
INNJ
6 TFSC 18 87 1041 44 27 8 6 1 1
7 ITEM 18 70 982 26 22 14 5 1 2
8 TASM 14 62 817 31 12 5 14 - -
9 IJOPM 13 45 463 22 10 10 3 - -
10 IIN 10 46 224 33 13 - - - -
1 IMG 28 107 3053 37 40 18 6 5 1
2 JMIS 27 64 3675 18 20 22 4 - -
ISYS
3 ISR 21 41 1795 16 15 6 3 - 1
4 JIT 15 36 818 9 15 9 3 - -
1 HRS 21 39 1242 10 15 12 2 - -
2 IJHRM 19 83 1339 38 29 13 3 - - HRJ
3 HRM 16 38 602 18 18 2 - - -
1 LRP 23 45 2296 14 7 11 12 1 -
2 JBR 23 99 1655 65 25 9 - - -
3 MLG 22 73 1162 23 27 19 4 - -
4 IMM 21 89 1652 46 30 12 1 - -
5 JSIS 20 41 1501 16 13 5 7 - -
6 JETM 20 45 1362 14 13 13 5 - -
7 SBE 19 74 1293 50 13 9 2 - -
8 IBR 19 89 1038 58 27 4 - - -
9 JWB 19 63 1016 34 18 10 1 - -
10 BJM 18 44 872 17 17 10 - - -
OPJ
11 JTT 16 68 627 43 25 - - - -
12 EJOR 15 45 653 9 17 8 7 3 1
13 MDC 14 81 581 54 27 - - - -
14 IJPM 14 58 459 47 11 - - - -
15 SRBS 12 56 470 16 31 8 1 - -
16 JORS 11 39 119 3 13 15 2 6 -
17 TQMBE 10 55 356 26 20 9 - - -
18 SIJ 9 51 291 31 18 2 - - -
19 EMJ 8 38 203 34 4 - - - -
20 AJBM 6 82 181 56 26 - - - -

Table 6 management (HRJ) have increasingly occupied the KM framework.

Bibliometric indicators by groups of journals. Finally, among the group of other business and management (OPJ)
Source: Elaborated based on WoS 2015. journals, two journals stand out. JBR has had high productivity, espe-
R JGT TPKM HKM TC cially in the most recent period (Q5), and it stands out for its h-index
within this group. In relation to the rest of the journals, EJOR's in-
1 MPRJ 893 34 6045 creasing publication of KM articles and its regularity over time are re-
2 INNJ 225 71 20,372
markable. Note that most of these journals have significantly increased
3 TMGJ 128 140 81,636
4 ISYS 107 54 9546 the number of KM articles published in the last period (Q5).
5 OPJ 45 63 17,611 Another interesting analysis is related to the number of citations
6 HRJ 39 35 3222 received by each group of journals and their respective h-indexes. The
data, ordered according to their productivity, are presented in Table 6.
Note that the group of the most productive journals (MPRJ) has an

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Table 7
The 50 most influential articles in knowledge management research.
Source: Elaborated based on WoS 2015.
R Title Authors J YP TC TCKM C/Y

1 A dynamic theory of organizational knowledge creation Nonaka, I OSC 1994 3722 3649 173,76
2 Knowledge of the firm, combinative capabilities, and the replication of technology Kogut, B; Zander, U OSC 1992 3519 3440 149,57
3 Toward a knowledge-based theory of the firm Grant, RM SMJ 1996 3437 3363 177,00
4 The relational view: cooperative strategy and sources of interorganizational competitive Dyer, JH; Singh, H AMR 1998 2854 2782 163,65
advantage
5 Exploring internal stickiness: impediments to the transfer of best practice within the firm Szulanski, G SMJ 1996 2247 2190 115,26
6 Organizational learning: the contributing processes and the literatures Huber, GP OSC 1991 2116 2087 86,96
7 Review: knowledge management and knowledge management systems: conceptual foundations Alavi, M; Leidner, DE MISQ 2001 1904 1868 133,43
and research issues
8 Prospering in dynamically-competitive environments: organizational capability as knowledge Grant, RM OSC 1996 1543 1511 79,53
integration
9 The knowledge-creating company Nonaka, I HBR 1991 1212 1189 49,54
10 Making knowledge the basis of a dynamic theory of the firm Spender, JC SMJ 1996 1134 1120 58,95
11 The concept of “ba”: building a foundation for knowledge creation Nonaka, I; Konno, N CMR 1998 1072 1057 62,18
12 Knowledge flows within multinational corporations Gupta, AK; Govindarajan, V SMJ 2000 1014 987 65,80
13 Creating and managing a high-performance knowledge-sharing network: the Toyota case Dyer, JH; Nobeoka, K SMJ 2000 984 964 64,27
14 Strategic alliances and interfirm knowledge transfer Mowery, DC; Oxley, JE; SMJ 1996 974 949 49,95
Silverman, BS
15 Relationships between providers and users of market-research - the dynamics of trust within and Moorman, C; Zaltman, G; JMR 1992 961 934 40,61
between organizations Deshpande, R
16 Knowledge transfer in intraorganizational networks: effects of network position and absorptive Tsai, WP AMJ 2001 940 918 65,57
capacity on business unit innovation and performance
17 What's your strategy for managing knowledge? Hansen, MT; Nohria, N; Tierney, HBR 1999 939 932 58,25
T
18 Why should I share? Examining social capital and knowledge contribution in electronic networks Wasko, MM; Faraj, S MISQ 2005 921 894 89,40
of practice
19 Network structure and knowledge transfer: the effects of cohesion and range Reagans, R; Mcevily, B ASQ 2003 828 792 66,00
20 Behavioral intention formation in knowledge sharing: examining the roles of extrinsic Bock, GW; Zmud, RW; Kim, YG; MQY 2005 802 774 77,40
motivators, social-psychological forces, and organizational climate Lee, JN
21 Social capital, networks, and knowledge transfer Inkpen, AC; Tsang, EWK AMR 2005 760 736 73,60
22 Knowledge transfer: a basis for competitive advantage in firms Argote, L; Ingram, P OBH 2000 742 716 47,73
23 A pragmatic view of knowledge and boundaries: boundary objects in new product development Carlile, PR OSC 2002 740 726 55,85
24 Knowing in practice: enacting a collective capability in distributed organizing Orlikowski, WJ OSC 2002 739 718 55,23
25 Technology brokering and innovation in a product development firm Hargadon, A; Sutton, RI ASQ 1997 729 708 39,33
26 Seci, ba and leadership: a unified model of dynamic knowledge creation Nonaka I; Toyama, R; Konno, N LRP 2000 705 699 46,60
27 Social capital, knowledge acquisition, and knowledge exploitation in young technology-based Yli-Renko, H; Autio, E; Sapienza, SMJ 2001 703 688 49,14
firms HJ
28 Successful knowledge management projects Davenport, TH; De Long, DW; SMR 1998 693 693 40,76
Beers, MC
29 Modularity, flexibility, and knowledge management in product and organization design Sanchez, R; Mahoney, JT SMJ 1996 683 668 35,16
30 Toward a new economics of science Dasgupta, P; David, PA RPY 1994 669 647 30,81
31 Knowledge management: an organizational capabilities perspective Gold, AH; Malhotra, A; Segars, JMI 2001 661 634 45,29
AH
32 Bridging epistemologies: the generative dance between organizational knowledge and Cook, SDN; Brown, JS OSC 1999 660 665 41,56
organizational knowing
33 The strength of weak ties you can trust: the mediating role of trust in effective knowledge transfer Levin, DZ; Cross, R MSC 2004 657 649 59,00
34 Beyond local search: boundary-spanning, exploration, and impact in the optical disk industry Rosenkopf, L; Nerkar, A SMJ 2001 643 620 44,29
35 Ambiguity and the process of knowledge transfer in strategic alliances Simonin, BL SMJ 1999 616 601 37,56
36 Knowledge, knowledge work and organizations: an overview and interpretation Blackler, F OSC 1995 607 602 30,10
37 Communities of practice: the organizational frontier Wenger, EC; Snyder, WM HBR 2000 605 598 39,87
38 Contributing knowledge to electronic knowledge repositories: an empirical investigation Kankanhalli, A; Tan, BCY; Wei, MISQ 2005 590 569 56,90
KK
39 Managing knowledge in organizations: an integrative framework and review of emerging themes Argote, L; Mcevily, B; Reagans, R MSC 2003 548 531 44,25
40 Knowledge networks as channels and conduits: the effects of spillovers in the boston Owen-Smith, J; Powell, WW OSC 2004 546 533 48,45
biotechnology community
41 Absorptive capacity, learning, and performance in international joint ventures Lane, PJ; Salk, JE; Lyles, MA SMJ 2001 544 527 37,64
42 A model of knowledge management and the n-form corporation Hedlund, G SMJ 1994 516 512 24,38
43 Developing a knowledge strategy Zack, MH CMR 1999 491 467 29,19
44 In search of complementarity in innovation strategy: internal r&d and external knowledge Cassiman, B; Veugelers, R MSC 2006 490 490 54,44
acquisition
45 Motivation, knowledge transfer, and organizational forms Osterloh, M; Frey, BS OSC 2000 473 439 29,27
46 Social structure of “coopetition” within a multiunit organization: coordination, competition, and Tsai, WP OSC 2002 464 463 35,62
intraorganizational knowledge sharing
47 The reification of absorptive capacity: a critical review and rejuvenation of the construct Lane, PJ; Koka, BR; Pathak, S AMR 2006 463 423 47,00
48 The process of knowledge transfer: a diachronic analysis of stickiness Szulanski, G OBH 2000 461 445 29,67
49 The internationalization and performance of smes Lu, JW; Beamish, PW SMJ 2001 454 443 31,64
50 Learning orientation, firm innovation capability, and firm performance Calantone, RJ; Cavusgil, ST; IMM 2002 452 460 35,38
Zhao, YS

J, abbreviated journal names are found in Table 4, except for AMR, Academy Of Management Review; ASQ, Administrative Science Quarterly; CMR, California
Management Review; HBR, Harvard Business Review; JMR, Journal of Marketing Research; OBH, Organizational Behavior And Humans; and SMR, Sloan Man-
agement Review.

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Table 8
The most productive and influential authors in KM research.
Source: Elaborated based on WoS 2015.
R Name C HKM TCKM TPKM PCKM ACKM TP TC H T50

1 Audretsch DB USA 16 1133 25 45,32 933 210 8737 47 –

2 Von Krogh G SWZ 15 1205 26 46,35 1127 66 2515 24 –
3 Nonaka I JPN 14 7518 16 469,88 6342 103 8939 25 4
4 Argote L USA 13 2523 17 148,41 2173 57 4924 28 2
5 Newell S UK 12 585 17 34,41 560 45 514 15 –
6 Foss NJ DEN 11 789 16 49,31 785 92 2250 27 –
7 Scarbrough H UK 11 759 12 63,25 723 53 1233 18 –
8 Swan J UK 11 628 11 57,09 592 42 1132 18 –
9 Lyles MA USA 10 1844 13 141,85 1523 53 3809 24 1
10 Lichtenthaler U GER 10 517 14 36,93 468 51 1085 19 –
11 Sabherwal R USA 10 492 10 49,20 454 69 2105 24 –
12 Michailova S NZL 10 476 13 36,62 452 28 627 15 –
13 Szulanski G SIN 9 3417 9 379,67 2971 21 3816 14 2
14 Acs ZJ USA 9 464 13 35,69 440 106 4833 36 –
15 Bontis N CAN 9 353 12 29,42 301 43 1278 17 –
16 Wright M UK 9 330 14 23,57 341 151 3240 39 –
17 Beamish PW CAN 8 845 10 84,50 855 90 4991 35 –
18 Volberda HW NED 8 830 9 92,22 858 76 3740 29 –
19 Bjorkman I FIN 8 810 12 67,50 807 43 1250 18 –
20 Hitt MA USA 8 677 9 75,22 757 174 13,707 63 –
21 Majchrzak A USA 8 642 11 58,36 635 69 1975 21 –
22 Pedersen T ITA 8 538 12 44,83 536 56 1930 23 –
23 Agarwal R USA 8 535 10 53,50 559 63 2032 21 –
24 Tiwana A USA 8 485 10 48,50 483 54 1452 24 –
25 Akgun AE TUR 8 348 10 34,80 318 46 848 –
26 Minbaeva DB DEN 8 243 9 27,00 250 20 576 11 –
27 Carayannis EG USA 8 216 9 24,00 202 71 773 18 –
28 Singh J SIN 7 535 7 76,43 562 13 727 10 –
29 Husted K NZL 7 367 9 40,78 391 10 407 8 –
30 Pan Sl SIN 7 304 9 33,78 300 8 44 4 –
31 Kodama M JPN 7 191 13 14,69 147 44 322 11 –
32 Lin CP TPE 7 183 9 20,33 201 67 585 16 –
33 Revilla E SPA 7 182 10 18,20 209 17 201 8 –
34 Sinkovics RR UK 7 167 10 16,70 174 50 707 17 –
35 Serenko A CAN 7 165 11 15,00 108 43 722 16 –
36 Corso M ITA 7 163 10 16,30 152 37 305 10 –
37 McAdam R UK 7 157 10 15,70 162 56 546 15 –
38 Liu YI CHI 7 149 9 16,56 191 44 697 18 –
39 Giroud A UK 6 121 9 13,44 115 24 188 11 –
40 Park BI KOR 6 93 11 8,45 89 19 90 6 –
41 Fang SC TPE 6 86 9 9,56 109 33 127 7 –
42 Ooi KB MAS 6 69 9 7,67 73 68 795 21 –
43 Liu XH UK 5 235 10 23,50 239 30 449 12 –
44 Shaw D UK 5 95 10 9,50 90 18 322 9 –
45 Navas-Lopez JE SPA 5 82 10 8,20 82 24 133 7 –
46 Hurmelinna-Laukkanen P FIN 5 65 13 5,00 76 22 237 9 –
47 Cegarra-Navarro JG SPA 5 60 12 5,00 61 78 325 9 –
48 Lin HF TPE 4 211 9 23,44 213 80 1427 23 –
49 Molina-Morales FX SPA 4 83 9 9,22 107,00 35 305 12 –
50 Palacios-Marques D SPA 4 31 10 3,10 36 30 89 8 –

h-index and a total number of citations that are quite low compared to 3.1.3. The 50 most influential articles in the field of knowledge management
the group of journals designated as those in the Top of business and For decades, many influential articles have been published in var-
management (TMGJ) or even compared to groups of innovation jour- ious journals. One method to identify them is to classify publications
nals (INNJ). This result can be explained from the debate that persists based on the number of citations received (Merigó et al., 2015b). The
on the indicators that evaluate a journal's quality (Raj and Zainab, number of citations reflects the influence, popularity and attention re-
2012). Authors have a tendency to publish and cite articles from major ceived by the scientific community. In this section, we analyze the
journals, a phenomenon known as the Impact Factor (Norris and most-cited articles in the journals of the business and management
Oppenheim, 2007). Second, given the cross-cutting nature of the KM areas of the WoS. This information is shown in Table 7.
field, KM scholars are intertwined with researchers from other fields, According to Table 7, the three most cited and influential articles
such as innovation, business and management, thus allowing a wider exceed the threshold of 3000 citations (Grant, 1996; Kogut and Zander,
community. Finally, because knowledge management is a practice that 1993; Nonaka, 1994). Of these, Nonaka's (1994) publication is the most
influences companies' competitiveness, it makes sense that the top cited and influential. Nonaka dominates this list, with 4 papers. It is
business and management journals are the most influential and the important to note that some of Nonaka's works are considered to be
most cited. foundations of this field of research. The next author with more

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Table 9
Most productive authors in the most productive journals grouped by topic.
Source: Elaborated based on WoS 2015.
R JKM KMRP IJTM TMGJ INNJ ISYS HRJ OPJ

Author P Author P Author P Author P Author P Author P Author P Author P

1 Serenko A 9 Gorry GA 3 Corso M 5 Lyles MA 10 D'este P 7 Lee JN 5 Bjorkman I 3 Audretsch DB 13

2 Bontis N 7 Handzic M 3 Yang J 5 Pedersen T 9 Carayannis EG 7 Whinston AB 4 Bonache J 3 Von Krogh G 13
3 Chua Ayk 4 Hossain L 3 De Pablos PO 4 Volberda HW 9 Santoro MD 6 Grover V 4 Brewster C 3 Acs ZJ 10
4 Del Giudice M 4 Huang JJ 3 Bontis N 3 Foss NJ 8 Roper S 6 Gosain S 4 Harzing AW 3 Newell S 8
5 Magnier-Watanabe R 4 Osei-Bryson KM 3 Phaal R 3 Argote L 7 Lichtenthaler U 6 Durcikova A 4 Makela K 3 Giroud A 6
6 Andreeva T 3 Salmador MP 3 Wink R 3 Bjorkman I 7 Kodama M 6 Choi B 4 Paauwe J 3 Li Y 6
7 Chawla D 3 Bolisani E 2 Wu SH 3 Haas MR 7 Geuna A 6 Yen DC 3 Boussebaa M 2 Shaw D 6
8 Corner Jl 3 Carlucci D 2 Bowonder B 2 Majchrzak A 7 Audretsch DB 6 Reich BH 3 Brown M 2 Swart J 6
9 Cruz-Gonzalez J 3 Chan YE 2 Bueno E 2 Szulanski G 7 Akgun AE 6 Mehta N 3 Buch R 2 Andersson U 5
10 Dumay J 3 Chong SC 2 Chen YH 2 Van Den Bosch FAJ 7 Von Krogh G 5 Malhotra A 3 Cabrera A 2 Cavusgil ST 5
11 Durst S 3 Edvarsson IR 2 Chiesa V 2 Almeida P 6 Sofka W 5 Majchrzak A 3 Cerdin JL 2 Cegarra-Navarro JG 5
12 Ganesh LS 3 Kianto A 2 Ding HB 2 Beamish PW 6 Sabherwal R 5 Lin CH 3 Currie G 2 Easterby-Smith M 5

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13 Joshi H 3 Kong E 2 Howells J 2 Liu Y 6 Keskin H 5 Jarvenpaa SL 3 Dysvik A 2 Kodama M 5
14 Kumar JA 3 Lagumdzija A 2 Hsu BF 2 Martin X 6 Garcia-Morales VJ 5 Huysman M 3 Edwards T 2 Lee GG 5
15 Levy M 3 Laihonen H 2 Hyland P 2 Rosenkopf L 6 Duysters G 5 Gray PH 3 Ferner A 2 Lin CH 5
16 Lin HF 3 Lettieri E 2 Liyanage S 2 Schroeder RG 6 Tiwana A 4 Fadel KJ 3 Foss NJ 2 Nakamori Y 5
17 Lopez-Saez P 3 Liebowitz J 2 Lytras MD 2 Singh J 6 Tijssen RJW 4 Dennis AR 3 Hocking JB 2 Ooi KB 5
18 Massingham P 3 Liebowitz JAY 2 Malik K 2 Agarwal R 5 Salter A 4 Benbasat I 3 Kuvaas B 2 Park BI 5
19 Navas-Lopez JE 3 Lin Hf 2 Martini A 2 Fey CF 5 Love JH 4 Lee H 2 Le Pargneux M 2 Buckley PJ 4
20 Rowley J 3 Lonnqvist A 2 Miyake T 2 Hansen MT 5 Lawson B 4 Sabherwal, R 2 Lengnick-Hall ML 2 Carlsson B 4
21 Senoo D 3 Magnier-Watanabe R 2 Nonaka I 2 Hitt MA 5 Hewitt-Dundas N 4 Tiwana A 2 Minbaeva DB 2 Johnston WJ 4
22 Sun PYT 3 Mothe C 2 Peltokorpi V 2 Kane GC 5 Hemmert M 4 Mclean ER 2 Morris SS 2 Li L 4
23 Venkitachalam K 3 Mura M 2 Probert DR 2 Lavie D 5 Grimpe C 4 Miranda SM 2 Pedersen T 2 Nonaka I 4
24 Delbridge R 2 Radaelli G 2 Rui MJ 2 Makino S 5 Gopalakrishnan S 4 Staples DS 2 Scarbrough H 2 Pan SL 4
25 Edvardsson IR 2 Reichgelt, H 2 Salmador MP 2 Nonaka I 5 Garavelli AC 4 Arnott D 2 Sturdy A 2 Pemsel S 4
26 Heisig P 2 Rosendaal B 2 Soosay C 2 Zhou KZ 5 Chai KH 4 Pervan G 2 Swan J 2 Roldan JL 4
27 Kianto A 2 Scarso E 2 Tovstiga G 2 Alavi, M 4 Autio E 4 Alavi M 2 Tarique I 2 Scarbrough H 4
28 Stone DN 2 Wijnhoven F 2 Verganti R 2 Grant RM 4 Dahl MS 3 Leidner DE 2 Tregaskis O 2 Swan J 4
29 Zhang W 2 Zhu ZC 2 Wang JJ 2 Nerkar, A 4 Verona G 3 Joshi KD 2 Vance CM 2 Tsai MT 4
30 64 Authors 2 15 Authors 2 16 Authors 2 18 Authors 4 47 Authors 3 40 Authors 2 3 Authors 2 12 Authors 4
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M. Gaviria-Marin et al. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 140 (2019) 194–220

Table 10 that the number of articles is an indicator that should be analyzed with
Temporal evolution by quinquennium and authors in the KM field. caution because several limitations must be considered, including the
Source: Elaborated based on WoS 2015. length of each paper, quality of the journal and number of authors per
R Authors C HKM TCKM TPKM Q5 Q4 Q3 Q2 Q1 work (Merigó et al., 2015a). In addition, it is necessary to consider that
some known authors may not appear because of the nature of this
1 Audretsch DB USA 16 1133 25 10 10 4 1 – classification, which can occur as a result of the year of indexing the
2 Von Krogh G SWZ 15 1205 26 12 10 3 1 –
journals in the WoS. Therefore, although it is true that we present some
3 Nonaka I JPN 14 7518 16 2 5 3 3 3
4 Argote L USA 13 2523 17 5 4 3 3 2 key researchers in the KM field, note that the authors may vary ac-
5 Newell S UK 12 585 17 4 4 7 1 1 cording to the predetermined parameters of the search. The classifica-
6 Foss NJ DEN 11 789 16 10 5 0 1 – tion presented in Table 8 is ordered according to HKM. In the event of a
7 Scarbrough H UK 11 759 12 1 2 7 2 –
tie, each author's citations are considered (TCKM). Recall that the h-
8 Swan J UK 11 628 11 – 2 7 2 –
9 Lyles MA USA 10 1844 13 2 5 3 2 1
index is a composite indicator that combines both productivity and
10 Lichtenthaler U GER 10 517 14 3 11 – – – influence.
11 Sabherwal R USA 10 492 10 2 4 4 – – The author with the best combination of productivity and influence
12 Michailova S NZL 10 476 13 6 3 4 – – in the KM literature is Audretsch, with an h-index of 16. Audretsch is a
13 Szulanski G SIN 9 3417 9 1 3 3 2 –
well-known author on issues related to entrepreneurship and has used
14 Acs ZJ USA 9 464 13 8 3 2 – –
15 Bontis N CAN 9 353 12 5 5 – 2 – theoretical frameworks from KM to explain how entrepreneurial op-
16 Wright M UK 9 330 14 8 5 1 – – portunities are generated (see, e.g., Audretsch and Keilbach, 2007). The
17 Beamish PW CAN 8 845 10 3 3 3 1 – second author on this list is Von Krogh, who has an h-index of 15. It is
18 Volberda HW NED 8 830 9 3 4 1 1 –
important to note that Von Krogh is the most productive author in the
19 Bjorkman I FIN 8 797 12 5 3 3 1 –
20 Agarwal R USA 8 722 10 3 5 1 1 –
KM field. Nonaka is in third place, with an h-index of 14. However, if all
21 Hitt MA USA 8 677 9 2 5 1 1 – of the indicators presented in Table 8 are considered, Nonaka can be
22 Majchrzak A ITA 8 642 11 5 3 3 – – considered one of the most relevant authors within this field. Note that
23 Pedersen T USA 8 538 12 10 1 1 – – although he is not the most productive author, he has many more ci-
24 Tiwana A USA 8 485 10 1 6 3 – –
tations (7518) than the other authors on the list. Moreover, Nonaka's
25 Akgun AE TUR 8 348 10 2 5 1 2 –
26 Minbaeva DB DEN 8 243 9 6 2 1 – – articles have a much higher average number of citations that those of
27 Carayannis EG USA 8 216 9 2 2 – 5 – other authors (PCKM = 469.88 citations per article). Furthermore,
28 Singh J SIN 7 532 7 2 3 2 – – Nonaka has four articles within the 50 most cited. Therefore, his re-
29 Husted K NZL 7 367 9 2 3 4 – – levance and influence in the field is clear. Another author who stands
30 Pan Sl SIN 7 304 9 2 4 2 1 –
31 Kodama M JPN 7 191 13 3 7 3 – –
out in this sense is Szulanski who, with only 9 articles in the field, has
32 Lin CP TPE 7 183 9 5 4 – – – 3417 citations, with 379.67 citations per article on average.
33 Revilla E SPA 7 182 10 3 5 2 – – To obtain a more complete picture of the most productive authors in
34 Sinkovics RR UK 7 167 10 6 4 – – – the groups of journals analyzed above, Table 9 is presented. To perform
35 Serenko A CAN 7 165 11 7 4 – – –
this analysis, the same groups of journals are used as were used for the
36 Corso M ITA 7 163 10 – 3 7 – –
37 McAdam R UK 7 157 10 1 5 3 1 – analysis presented in Table 5.
38 Liu YI CHI 7 149 9 7 2 0 – – According to Table 9, Nonaka is the author with the most complete
39 Giroud A UK 6 121 9 4 5 0 – – profile among these groups of journals. He has two articles in IJTM, 5
40 Park BI KOR 6 93 11 9 2 0 – – articles in the group of the top business and management journals
41 Fang SC TPE 6 86 9 5 4 0 – –
42 Ooi KB MAS 6 69 9 6 3 0 – –
(TMGJ), and 4 articles in other business and management journals
43 Liu XH UK 5 235 10 6 4 0 – – (OPJ). Other authors who appear in more than one group are Von
44 Shaw D UK 5 95 10 3 4 3 – – Krogh and Audretsch, who have published articles in both innovation
45 Navas-Lopez JE SPA 5 82 10 1 5 3 1 – (INNJ) and other business and management (OPJ) journals. Likewise,
46 Hurmelinna-Laukkanen P FIN 5 65 13 10 3 – – –
Alavi has published articles in both the ISYS journals and main business
47 Cegarra-Navarro JG SPA 5 60 12 8 4 – – –
48 Lin HF TPE 4 211 9 7 2 – – – and management journals (TMGJ). Authors such as Lin HF, Kianto,
49 Palacios-Marques D SPA 4 31 10 9 1 – – – Bontis, Magnier-Watanabe and Salmador MP have published in the
50 Molina-Morales FX SPA 4 4 9 7 1 1 – – most productive and exclusive journals of the KM field. Finally, we
emphasize that there is no concentration of authors in any group of
journals, which can initially be explained by the relative youth of the
KM field. Additionally, it is a good sign that the KM field does not have
citations in this list is Grant, who has two articles. It should also be
a “super star” effect, which occurs when journal editors prefer a small
noted that this list only includes academic publications (i.e., articles,
group of highly productive researchers when deciding which articles to
notes, reviews and letters) and excludes some works that may be highly
publish (Serenko et al., 2011).
cited in the field of research, such as the work of Davenport and Prusak
Another important issue is analyzing an authors' productivity over
(1998).
time. This analysis is presented in Table 10, which shows the number of
publications per author and per quinquennium. This list of authors is
3.1.4. An overview of the most productive and influential authors in KM sorted in a decreasing manner according to their influence within the
Since its inception, the KM field has been characterized by con- field. In the event of a tie, the total number of citations by each author
tinuous growth and the participation of a large number of researchers. is considered.
According to Serenko and Bontis (2013), KM is a very attractive domain Lin CP is the most veteran author in the field. He is followed by
in which the contributions of both academics and professionals are Nonaka, Argote, Newell and Lyles, all of whom have been published
welcome. One important issue when obtaining an overview of KM re- for > 25 years. All of these authors can be considered to be pioneers in
search is that of determining the most productive and influential au- the KM literature. In Q4, 17 new authors appear, among which
thors in the field. Table 8 is presents the results of this analysis. Note Carayannis stands out with 5 articles. The following five-year periods

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Table 11
The 50 most productive and influential institutions in KM research.
Source: Elaborated based on WoS 2015.
R Institutions C HKM TCKM TPKM PCKM ACKM T50 ≥500 ≥200 ≥100 ≥50 < 50

1 U North Carolina USA 31 2957 76 38,91 2891 1 1 2 2 11 60

2 U Maryland College Park USA 28 5117 40 127,93 4603 2 2 5 8 4 21
3 INSEAD Business School FRA 27 4740 51 92,94 4316 1 1 3 7 10 30
4 Copenhagen Business School DEN 27 2489 97 25,66 2327 – – 1 6 9 81
5 Harvard U USA 26 4997 44 113,57 4813 3 3 2 7 5 27
6 U Minnesota TC USA 26 3191 57 55,98 3077 1 1 3 4 9 40
7 Erasmus U Rotterdam NED 25 2194 70 31,34 2214 – 1 1 3 9 56
8 U Warwick UK 25 1476 66 22,36 1404 – – – 2 8 56
9 Carnegie Mellon U USA 23 3741 46 81,33 3222 3 3 1 5 14 23
10 Indiana U USA 23 2574 36 71,50 2429 1 1 4 2 6 23
11 U Pennsylvania USA 22 5624 40 140,60 5214 4 2 4 2 12 20
12 U Texas Austin USA 22 4768 39 122,26 4491 2 2 1 7 5 24
13 Arizona State U USA 22 3144 33 95,27 3074 2 1 3 7 7 15
14 New York U USA 22 2720 34 80,00 2702 – – 7 3 3 21
15 U Southern California USA 22 1992 35 56,91 1882 – – 3 3 7 22
16 U Cambridge UK 21 2033 44 46,20 2065 1 1 1 3 4 35
17 U Manchester UK 21 1240 73 16,99 1233 – – – – 8 65
18 National U Singapore SIN 20 2930 52 56,35 2672 2 2 1 2 6 41
19 Michigan State U USA 20 2115 37 57,16 2099 1 – 4 2 7 24
20 Bocconi U ITA 20 1451 59 24,59 1473 – – – 4 5 50
21 U Nottingham UK 20 1403 51 27,51 1397 – – 1 1 6 43
22 U Western Ontario CAN 19 1657 40 41,43 1588 – – 1 5 2 32
23 City U Hong Kong CHI 18 2679 61 43,92 2297 2 2 2 1 4 52
24 Tilburg U NED 18 1139 39 29,21 1145 – – 1 2 1 35
25 Cranfield U UK 18 1113 40 27,83 1110 – – 1 2 2 35
26 Swiss Fed. Inst. of Tech Zurich SWZ 18 1051 49 21,45 970 – – 1 2 – 46
27 Rutgers State U USA 17 1696 48 35,33 1686 1 1 – 2 7 38
28 Temple U USA 17 1495 37 40,41 1438 – – 3 – 5 29
29 Imperial College London UK 17 1060 32 33,13 1163 – – – 2 8 22
30 Xi an Jiaotong U CHI 17 770 45 17,11 741 – – – 2 1 42
31 Stockholm Sch. of Econ. SWE 16 5123 35 146,37 4722 2 2 2 1 2 28
32 Georgia State U USA 16 1236 38 32,53 1212 – – – 5 – 33
33 Eindhoven U Tech NED 16 1113 32 34,78 1177 – – – 5 4 23
34 National Cheng Kung U TPE 16 691 50 13,82 720 – – – – 3 47
35 U Toronto CAN 15 1472 38 38,74 1493 1 1 – – 1 36
36 U Melbourne AUS 15 715 36 19,86 696 – – – 1 2 33
37 KU Leuven BEL 14 1106 34 32,53 1124 1 1 1 – 1 31
38 Aalto U FIN 14 1091 38 28,71 1114 1 1 – – 2 35
39 George Washington U USA 14 847 34 24,91 853 – – 1 2 2 29
40 Loughborough U UK 14 616 31 19,87 725 – – 1 2 – 28
41 Lancaster U UK 13 1373 33 41,61 1387 1 1 – 3 1 28
42 Polytechnic U Milan ITA 13 444 32 13,88 484 – – – – 2 30
43 U Leeds UK 12 434 39 11,13 449 – – – 1 2 36
44 BI Norwegian Bus. Sch. NOR 11 472 33 14,30 559 – – – 2 2 29
45 Polytechnic U of Valencia SPA 11 446 46 9,70 464 – – – 1 2 43
46 Cardiff U UK 11 375 34 11,03 415 – – – – 2 32
47 U Groningen NED 11 302 34 8,88 320 – – – – – 34
48 Lappeenranta U Tech FIN 10 303 34 8,91 305 – – – – 1 33
49 Hong Kong Polytech. U CHI 9 223 34 6,56 255 – – – – – 34
50 U Valencia SPA 9 184 38 4,84 212 – – – – – 38

(Q3, Q2 and Q1) are characterized by an increase in the number of According to Table 11, no single university leads this field of re-
publications and the emergence of new authors. search. The University of North Carolina has the best combination of
productivity and influence, with an HKM of 31. In second place is the
3.1.5. The most productive and influential institutions University of Maryland-College Park, with an HKM of 28. Third and
The KM field has become a rather attractive and productive dis- fourth places are occupied by INSEAD Business School and Copenhagen
cipline of study. For several years, authors have sought to establish KM's Business School, both of which have an HKM of 27. In this case, the
unique identity as an academic field that is recognized by diverse ac- tiebreaker was based on the TCIE. The remainder of the institutions are
tors, including university institutions (Serenko et al., 2010). These in- sorted in succession. In terms of productivity, note that Copenhagen
stitutions are primarily responsible for promoting the development of Business School is the most productive, with 97 publications. The
various fields of research. It is interesting, in this sense, to conduct an University of North Carolina is in second place, with 76 articles. Third
analysis of KM research performed in different universities. Table 11 and fourth place are occupied by the University of Manchester and
presents this analysis. Note that the data are sorted according to the Erasmus University Rotterdam, with 73 and 70 articles, respectively.
HKM. Like the tables mentioned above, in the event of a tie in the HKM, The rest of the schools are sequentially ordered in decreasing order. As
the total number of citations (TCKM) are considered. for the total number of citations, three universities stand out because

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Table 12
The 30 most productive institutions in the 50 most productive journals grouped by theme.
Source: Elaborated based on WoS 2015.
R JKM KMRP IJTM TMGJ INNJ ISYS HRJ OPJ

Institutions P Institutions P Institutions P Institutions P Institutions P Institutions P Institutions P Institutions P

1 Lakehead U 10 U Sydney 4 PolyTechnic U Milan 7 INSEAD Bus. Sch. 38 Bocconi U 17 City U Hong Kong 14 U Warwick 7 Copenhagen Bus. Sch. 24
2 Nanyang Tech. U 7 UE Sao Paulo 4 U Oviedo 6 U Maryland College Park 27 U Sussex 16 U Texas Austin 9 U Melbourne 7 National Cheng Kung U 22
3 McMaster U 7 Tampere U Tech. 4 U Queensland 5 U Pennsylvania 26 Eindhoven U Tech. 16 U Southern California 8 Copenhagen Bus. Sch. 6 U Manchester 21
4 Tampere U Tech. 6 Queens U Canada 4 U Manchester 5 U Minnesota TC 24 U Manchester 15 U Pittsburgh 8 U Bath 4 XI AN Jiaotong U 19
5 U Waikato 5 Vrije U Amsterdam 3 Georgia Inst. Tech. 5 Erasmus U Rotterdam 24 National U Singapore 14 U North Carolina 8 Tilburg U 4 U Warwick 17
6 U Padua 5 Virginia Commonwealth U 3 U Pisa 4 Copenhagen Bus. Sch. 23 Copenhagen Bus. Sch. 14 U Arizona 7 Rutgers State U 4 Swiss Federal IT Zurich 17
7 U Newcastle 5 U Southern Queensland 3 U Cambridge 4 New York U 22 U North Carolina 12 Simon Fraser U 6 Cranfield U 4 U North Carolina 16
8 U Castilla-La Mancha 5 U Padua 3 National Yunlin U Sci. Tech. 4 U Illinois 19 KU Leuven 12 National Sun Yat Sen U 6 U Reading 3 U Valencia 15
9 Seconda U Degli Studi Di Napoli 5 U Murcia 3 Lappeenranta U Tech. 4 U Southern California 18 CNRS-France 12 London Sch. Econ. 6 U Manchester 3 U Sevilla 15
Political Sci.
10 Macquarie U 5 Rice U 3 Autonomous U Madrid 4 U North Carolina 18 U Toronto 11 Georgia State U 6 U Carlos III Madrid 3 U Leeds 15
11 Indian Inst. Tech. IIT 5 Lappeenranta U Tech. 3 Western Sydney U 3 Indiana U 18 U Nottingham 11 U Western Ontario 5 Pace U 3 U Nottingham 14
12 Complutense U Madrid 5 Autonomous U Madrid 3 U Tokyo 3 Harvard U 17 U Groningen 11 U Texas Dallas 5 Norwegian Sch. Of Econ. 3 Erasmus U Rotterdam 14
NHH
13 U Wollongong 4 U Twente 2 U Southern Mississippi 3 Carnegie Mellon U 17 George Washington U 11 U Oklahoma Norman 5 Lancaster U 3 U Tech. Sydney 12
14 U Tsukuba 4 U Tsukuba 2 U Reading 3 U Western Ontario 15 Cranfield U 11 U Minnesota TC 5 Kings College London 3 George Mason U 12

207
15 U Valladolid 4 U Strathclyde 2 U Padua 3 Ohio State U 15 U Warwick 10 U Kentucky 5 INSEAD Bus. Sch. 3 Uppsala U 11
16 Loughborough U 4 U Southampton 2 Swiss Federal IT Zurich 3 Massachusetts IT MIT 15 Swiss Federal IT Zurich 10 Queens U Canada 5 ESSEC Bus. Sch. 3 National U Singapore 11
17 George Washington U 4 U South Australia 2 Rutgers State U 3 U Texas Austin 14 Rensselaer PolyTechnic 10 National Cheng Kung U 5 Erasmus U Rotterdam 3 Cardiff U 11
Inst.
18 CNRS-France 4 U Sherbrooke 2 National Sun Yat Sen U 3 U Warwick 13 Maastricht U 10 McGill U 5 De Montfort U 3 Aston U 11
19 Cardiff U 4 U Savoie 2 National Cheng Kung U 3 U Michigan 13 Imperial College London 10 Carnegie Mellon U 5 Cardiff U 3 U Politecnica Valencia 10
20 Bangkok U 4 U Salento 2 McMaster U 3 Tilburg U 13 CSIC 10 Boston U 5 BI Norwegian Bus. Sch. 3 PolyTechnic U Milan 10
21 Vrije U Amsterdam 4 U Portsmouth 2 Hsing Kuo U Manag. 3 Bocconi U 13 U Utrecht 9 Utah State U 4 Virginia PolyTechnic 2 U Granada 9
Inst. State U
22 Victoria U Wellington 3 U Ottawa 2 George Washington U 3 Rutgers State U 12 U Cambridge 9 U Washington 4 U Texas Arlington 2 U Cambridge 9
23 U Ulster 3 U Montreal 2 Delft U Tech. 3 U Washington 11 U Politecnica Valencia 9 U Missouri St. Louis 4 U Santiago Compostela 2 U Bath 9
24 U Sydney 3 U Melbourne 2 Copenhagen Bus. Sch. 3 Stockholm Sch. Of Econ. 11 PolyTechnic U Milan 9 U British Columbia 4 U Oxford 2 Old Dominion U 9
25 U Salento 3 U Jean Moulin Lyon III 2 Complutense U Madrid 3 National U Singapore 11 Whu Otto Beisheim Sch. 8 Emory U 4 U Nottingham 2 National Taiwan U Sci. 9
Manag. Tech.
26 U Reading 3 U Hull 2 Asia U Taiwan 3 London Bus. Sch. 11 U Tokyo 8 Clemson U 4 U New South Wales 2 Lancaster U 9
27 U North Texas Denton 3 U Cambridge 2 Aalto U 3 Emory U 11 U Strasbourg 8 Yonsei U 3 U Michigan 2 Georgia State U 9
28 U Melbourne 3 U Bologna 2 Zhejiang U 2 Brigham Young U 11 Seoul National U 8 Vrije U Amsterdam 3 U Cambridge 2 Whu Otto Beisheim Sch 8
Manag.
29 U Limerick 3 U Basque Country 2 U Twente 2 Arizona State U 11 Korea U 8 U Warwick 3 U Birmingham 2 U Strathclyde 8
30 U Basilicata 3 U Basilicata 2 U Texas Austin 2 U Washington 10 Erasmus U Rotterdam 8 U South Florida 3 U Bedfordshire 2 Temple U 8
Technological Forecasting & Social Change 140 (2019) 194–220
M. Gaviria-Marin et al. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 140 (2019) 194–220

Table 13 that many institutions have one of the 50 most influential articles. In
Temporal evolution by quinquenniums and institutions in the KM field. this sense, the USA is the country with the most articles (21) included in
Source: Elaborated based on WoS 2015. the 50 most influential articles. Finally, it is interesting to note
R Institutions C HKM TCKM TPKM Q5 Q4 Q3 Q2 Q1 that > 50% of the most influential universities come from only two
countries: the USA (16 institutions) and the UK (10 institutions). Most
1 U North Carolina USA 31 2957 76 32 27 13 3 1 of the rest of these institutions are in located Europe (16 institutions)
2 U Maryland College Park USA 28 5117 40 10 18 7 5 –
and, to a lesser extent, Asia (5 institutions) and Oceania (one institu-
3 INSEAD Bus. Sch. FRA 27 4740 51 21 18 12 – –
4 Copenhagen Bus. Sch. DEN 27 2489 97 42 39 12 4 – tion).
5 Harvard U USA 26 4997 44 21 10 12 – 1 Another aspect that is interesting to analyze is the participation of
6 U Minnesota TC USA 26 3191 57 23 23 8 2 1 the most relevant universities in the main groups of journals presented
7 Erasmus U Rotterdam NED 25 2194 70 36 25 7 1 1
in Table 4. Therefore, the 30 major institutions in KM research are
8 U Warwick UK 25 1476 66 27 21 13 4 1
9 Carnegie Mellon U USA 23 3741 46 38 8 – – –
presented in Table 12.
10 Indiana U USA 23 2574 36 19 11 4 1 1 According to Table 12, several institutions stand out because they
11 U Pennsylvania USA 22 5624 40 17 12 7 4 – publish in the main groups of journals. For example, the University of
12 U Texas Austin USA 22 4768 39 8 10 12 6 3 Warwick has published in all of the major journal groups. Copenhagen
13 Arizona State U USA 22 3144 33 11 12 8 2 –
Business School, which is the most productive institution, has published
14 New York U USA 22 2720 34 20 13 1 – –
15 U Southern California USA 22 1992 35 8 10 12 3 2 in one of the most productive journals (IJTM), but concentrates its
16 U Cambridge UK 21 2033 44 13 13 7 8 3 production of KM papers in almost all of the groups of journals, such as
17 U Manchester UK 21 1240 73 37 25 8 3 – the top business and management journals (TMGJ), innovation journals
18 National U Singapore SIN 20 2930 52 22 17 10 3 –
(INNJ), human resource journals (HRJ) and other business journals
19 Michigan State U USA 20 2115 37 16 15 5 1 –
20 Bocconi U ITA 20 1451 59 30 21 8 – –
(OPJ). The University of North Carolina and Erasmus University of
21 U Nottingham UK 20 1403 51 16 19 11 5 – Rotterdam are other institutions that, like Copenhagen Business School,
22 U Western Ontario CAN 19 1657 40 8 19 8 4 1 have published in the main groups of journals. We also note the greater
23 City U Hong Kong CHI 18 2679 61 33 15 11 2 – international dispersion in journals with greater productivity. It appears
24 Tilburg U NED 18 1139 39 17 20 2 – –
that, in this group, American universities are less influential.
25 Cranfield U UK 18 1113 40 14 16 6 3 1
26 Swiss Federal IT Zurich SWZ 18 1051 49 29 19 1 – – Finally, to obtain a more complete view of the productivity of the
27 Rutgers State U USA 17 1696 48 24 15 6 3 – main institutions, productivity over time is examined. This analysis was
28 Temple U USA 17 1495 37 16 15 5 1 – performed on the data presented in Table 13. As in the previous tables,
29 Imperial College London UK 17 1060 32 16 9 5 2 – the institutions are arranged according to their HKM, and the tie-
30 Xi an Jiaotong U CHI 17 770 45 22 23 – – –
31 Stockholm Sch. Econ. SWE 16 5123 35 16 11 5 1 2
breaking parameter is TCKM.
32 Georgia State U USA 16 1236 38 22 9 5 2 – Several universities have been publishing increasingly more often
33 Eindhoven U Tech NED 16 1113 32 11 11 8 2 – since the field began. Most of them are located in the United States.
34 National Cheng Kung U TPE 16 691 50 24 22 4 – – However, it is also important to note that of the 25 papers published in
35 U Toronto CAN 15 1472 38 18 18 1 1 –
the 1990s, 68% are from European universities. This suggests that al-
36 U Melbourne AUS 15 715 36 13 16 6 1 –
37 KU Leuven BEL 14 1106 34 16 13 4 1 – though European universities have developed KM intensely from the
38 Aalto U FIN 14 1091 38 30 8 – – – outset, their North American peers have played a more active role in the
39 George Washington U USA 14 847 34 20 10 3 1 – development of the field over the years.
40 Loughborough U UK 14 616 31 14 13 3 – 1
41 Lancaster U UK 13 1373 33 17 12 1 2 1
42 Polytechnic U Milan ITA 13 444 32 14 14 2 2 –
3.1.6. Country analysis
43 U Leeds UK 12 434 39 28 6 3 1 1 Based on the premise that research fosters economic development
44 BI Norwegian Bus. Sch. NOR 11 472 33 23 5 3 1 1 and growth, countries are increasingly investing in these activities
45 Polytechnic U of Valencia SPA 11 446 46 17 17 6 4 2 (Becker, 2015). To obtain a complete image of the KM field, this section
46 Cardiff U UK 11 375 34 11 10 9 1 3
analyzes the geographical origin of KM publications. It is important to
47 U Groningen NED 11 302 34 17 6 4 6 1
48 Lappeenranta U Tech FIN 10 303 34 25 7 2 – – note that particularities can be observed in a country since some re-
49 Hong Kong Polytechnic U CHI 9 223 34 24 7 2 1 – searchers often travel internationally, especially between the United
50 U Valencia SPA 9 184 38 12 18 7 1 – States and the United Kingdom (Merigó et al., 2015a). Therefore, an
author may have publications in two or more countries. In this sense,
analysis by country refers to the country in which the author was
working at the time of publication. Table 14 presents a ranking of the
50 main countries in KM research. This table also includes indicators
they have > 5000 citations: the University of Pennsylvania, Stockholm that show both the productivity and number of citations per million
School of Economics and the University of Maryland-College Park. Each inhabitants. Note that the ranking of countries is ordered by HKM. In
of these institutions' publications have an average of > 120 citations. the event of a tie, the total number of citations (TCKM) is taken into
Harvard University, the University of Texas Austin and INSEAD Busi- account.
ness School have > 4000 citations, and the average number of citations The United States is the leading country in KM research by far. Note
per article is > 110 citations, except for INSEAD Business School, which that the country's h-index is quite superior to that of other countries
has an average number of 92.94 citations per publication. Another as- (HKM = 161). Likewise, the US productivity and citation levels are well
pect that is interesting to highlight is that of universities with articles above those of the UK, with > 2000 papers and more than five times
that are among the 50 most influential articles. Here, we note that the the number of citations (TCKM = 113,564). Moreover, the United
University of Pennsylvania has 4 articles within this group of publica- States is the country with the most papers among the 50 most influ-
tions, followed by Harvard University and Carnegie Mellon University, ential countries and has a large number of highly cited papers. The size
each of which have 3 articles in the Top 50 group. This table also shows of the country, language facilities, number of researchers and

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Table 14
The 50 most productive and influential countries in KM research.
Source: Elaborated based on WoS 2015 and datos.bancomundial.org /Jun/2016.
R Country HKM TCKM TPKM PCKM ACKM T50 ≥500 ≥200 ≥100 ≥50 < 50 TPKM/PMH TCKM/PMH

1 USA 161 113,564 2060 55,13 4167 39 36 84 115 217 1608 6,41 353,12
2 UK 75 21,794 928 23,48 17,289 4 4 12 32 69 811 14,26 334,79
3 Canada 51 8531 344 24,8 7747 2 1 3 13 24 303 9,60 238,13
4 Netherlands 45 6338 311 20,38 5904 – – 2 8 24 277 18,36 374,22
5 Germany 42 4963 301 16,49 4565 – – 1 8 17 275 3,70 60,96
6 China 38 6430 421 15,27 5634 2 2 2 8 17 392 0,30 4,65
7 Spain 38 5168 434 11,91 4589 1 – 3 8 12 411 9,33 111,08
8 Italy 38 4198 282 14,89 3693 – – 1 4 10 267 4,64 69,05
9 France 37 6540 232 28,19 5962 2 2 3 6 12 209 3,47 97,89
10 Singapore 36 5786 115 50,31 5041 4 3 2 5 14 91 20,78 1.045,35
11 Australia 35 4490 330 13,61 4361 1 1 2 3 8 316 13,88 188,8
12 Taiwan 34 4417 371 11,91 3850 – – 1 5 13 352 15,79 188
13 Denmark 33 3667 159 23,06 3296 – – 2 7 12 138 28,09 648
14 Sweden 32 7607 197 38,61 6791 3 2 3 3 8 181 20,10 776
15 Finland 31 3309 170 19,58 2999 1 2 1 2 9 155 30,83 604
16 South Korea 30 4326 184 23,51 3990 1 1 4 6 6 167 3,64 85
17 Switzerland 30 3022 135 22,39 2853 1 0 2 4 8 121 16,39 367
18 Japan 27 9043 120 75,36 7771 4 4 3 4 5 104 0,95 71
19 Belgium 25 2107 77 27,36 2048 1 – 2 2 5 68 6,82 187
20 Norway 24 1555 100 15,71 1513 – – – 3 8 88 19,02 299
21 Israel 22 1284 51 25,18 1273 – – – 4 5 42 6,09 153
22 Austria 21 1443 78 18,5 1445 – – 1 2 4 71 9,12 169
23 New Zealand 17 723 63 11,48 717 – – – – 3 60 13,55 155
24 Ireland 17 524 55 9,70 653 – – – – 1 53 11,64 110
25 Portugal 15 415 43 9,65 437 – – – – 1 42 4,16 40
26 Malaysia 13 567 75 7,56 556 – – 1 – 1 73 2,47 19
27 India 13 404 55 7,35 393 – – – – 1 54 0,04 0
28 Turkey 13 389 40 9,73 402 – – – – 2 38 0,51 5
29 Greece 11 887 39 22,74 897 – – 1 2 1 35 3,60 82
30 Brazil 11 387 69 5,61 387 – – – – 1 68 0,33 2
31 Slovenia 10 252 28 9 273 – – – – – 28 13,57 122
32 Mexico 10 241 22 10,95 272 – – – – 1 21 0,17 2
33 Russia 8 487 15 32,47 506 – – 1 – 1 13 0,10 3
34 Vietnam 8 180 17 10,59 172 – – – – – 17 0,19 2
35 South Africa 8 159 36 4,42 168 – – – – – 36 0,66 3
36 Thailand 7 101 26 3,88 114 – – – – – 26 0,38 1
37 U Arab Emirates 7 96 24 4 113 – – – – – 24 2,62 10
38 Saudi Arabia 7 85 20 4,25 107 – – – – – 20 0,63 3
39 Iceland 6 108 8 13,5 121 – – – – 1 7 24,18 326
40 Iran 6 104 34 3,06 105 – – – – – 34 0,43 1
41 Chile 6 83 16 5,19 88 – – – – – 16 0,89 5
42 Argentina 5 91 7 13 80 – – – – – 7 0,16 2
43 Egypt 5 70 7 10 76 – – – – – 7 0,08 1
44 Poland 5 56 15 3,73 61 – – – – – 15 0,39 1
45 Czech Republic 4 91 8 11,38 80 – – – – – 8 0,76 9
46 Serbia 4 47 10 4,7 52 – – – – – 10 1,41 7
47 Cyprus 4 43 11 3,91 49 – – – – – 11 9,44 37
48 Estonia 4 19 8 2,38 26 – – – – – 8 6,10 14
49 Colombia 3 47 12 3,92 55 – – – – – 12 0,25 1
50 Pakistan 3 11 7 1,57 15 – – – – – 7 0,04 0

investment in R & D are some of the reasons that can explain this Another aspect that is interesting to analyze is the number of articles
ranking. The UK is in second place, with a HKM of 75 and 928 papers published by each country in the different groups of journals. This
overall. Note that the UK data are lower than the US data, but are much analysis was performed on the data presented in Table 15.
higher than the third and fourth positions, occupied by Canada and the As in the previous table, the results indicate that the USA and UK are
Netherlands, respectively. the most productive countries in all journals and groups of journals.
Consider that most of the countries that appear in this ranking are However, there are some peculiarities. For example, it is observed that
European (23 countries). They represent 46% of the list. Likewise, we the USA has a large difference from the UK and Canada in the top
observe that 30% of the list is Asian, with China being the most influ- business and administration journals (TMGJ) and information systems
ential and productive country in the region (HKM = 38). Note that the journals (ISYS), respectively. Note that this difference is not noticeable
participation of both Latin American and African countries is quite in other groups of journals. It is also interesting to note that the most
scarce in this field, both in quantity and influence. Finally, it is inter- productive journals—JKM, KMRP and IJTM—have the widest range of
esting to note that the Nordic countries, including Finland, Denmark, countries, in which some Latin American and South African countries
Sweden and Iceland, are the most productive countries per million appear.
people. Singapore is equally remarkable because it has a relatively large Finally, to provide a more global picture in terms of productivity per
number of citations per million people. country, Table 16 presents the ranking of countries and their evolution

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Table 15
Most productive countries in the 50 most productive journals grouped by theme.
Source: Elaborated based on WoS 2015.
R JKM KMRP IJTM TMGJ INNJ ISYS HRJ OPJ

Country P Country P Country P Country P Country P Country P Country P Country P

1 USA 53 USA 43 USA 59 USA 525 USA 227 USA 149 UK 42 USA 263
2 UK 43 UK 30 UK 38 UK 96 UK 148 Canada 27 USA 39 UK 252
3 Australia 37 Australia 22 Taiwan 30 Netherlands 53 Germany 83 Taiwan 23 Australia 16 Taiwan 124
4 Spain 30 France 21 Spain 26 Canada 49 Netherlands 80 China 24 China 14 Spain 114
5 Italy 29 Spain 20 Italy 20 France 44 Italy 74 UK 21 Spain 13 China 103
6 China 26 Italy 20 Canada 12 Singapore 35 Taiwan 57 South Korea 18 Taiwan 12 Australia 73
7 Canada 26 Canada 16 Australia 12 China 38 Spain 57 Australia 10 Netherlands 9 Germany 71
8 France 21 Taiwan 14 Netherlands 11 Germany 32 France 48 Netherlands 7 France 9 Canada 58
9 India 18 China 9 China 10 Denmark 25 Canada 38 Germany 7 Germany 7 Netherlands 51
10 Malaysia 14 Netherlands 9 Japan 10 Australia 24 China 37 Singapore 6 Denmark 7 Italy 47
11 Germany 14 Germany 9 Sweden 9 Italy 23 South Korea 34 Switzerland 4 Norway 6 Sweden 44

210
12 Taiwan 13 Finland 9 Finland 9 Sweden 22 Japan 31 Spain 4 Finland 6 Denmark 39
13 Finland 13 Japan 7 Switzerland 7 Spain 20 Denmark 30 Sweden 3 Canada 6 France 36
14 Singapore 12 Sweden 5 South Korea 7 Switzerland 19 Sweden 29 U Arab Emirates 2 South Korea 5 Switzerland 33
15 South Korea 11 Malaysia 5 Austria 7 Finland 16 Switzerland 27 Israel 2 Ireland 5 South Korea 33
16 New Zealand 11 Brazil 5 Greece 6 South Korea 15 Finland 27 Turkey 1 Italy 4 Finland 31
17 Sweden 10 New Zealand 4 Germany 5 Norway 14 Australia 25 Thailand 1 Singapore 3 Malaysia 27
18 Brazil 10 Greece 4 France 4 Japan 14 Belgium 19 Norway 1 Belgium 3 Japan 22
19 Thailand 7 Russia 3 Denmark 4 Belgium 14 Singapore 17 Nigeria 1 Turkey 2 Norway 20
20 Switzerland 7 Bosnia Herceg 3 Belgium 4 Israel 8 Norway 15 New Zealand 1 Switzerland 2 Iran 18
21 Japan 7 South Korea 2 Ireland 3 Taiwan 5 Portugal 13 Malaysia 1 New Zealand 2 Austria 16
22 Netherlands 6 South Africa 2 India 3 UK 5 Turkey 11 Lebanon 1 Japan 2 Ireland 14
23 Iran 6 Saudi Arabia 2 Singapore 2 Austria 5 Austria 11 Japan 1 Austria 2 New Zealand 13
24 Austria 6 Mexico 2 Ukraine 1 Russia 4 Brazil 8 Italy 1 U Arab Emirates 1 Belgium 13
25 Portugal 5 Jordan 2 Thailand 1 Portugal 4 Ireland 7 Ireland 1 South Africa 1 Singapore 12
26 Norway 5 Jamaica 2 Slovenia 1 New Zealand 4 India 6 India 1 Slovenia 1 South Africa 10
27 Israel 5 Ireland 2 Saudi Arabia 1 India 3 Greece 6 Finland 1 Poland 1 Portugal 10
28 Denmark 5 Iran 2 Portugal 1 Greece 3 Thailand 5 Malta 1 Saudi Arabia 9
29 South Africa 4 Iceland 2 Mexico 1 Turkey 2 South Africa 5 Israel 1 India 9
30 Mexico 4 Denmark 2 Malaysia 1 Ireland 2 Israel 5 India 1 Vietnam 8
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M. Gaviria-Marin et al. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 140 (2019) 194–220

Table 16
Temporal evolution by quinquenniums and country in the KM field.
Source: Elaborated based on WoS 2015.
R Country HKM TCKM TPKM Q5 Q4 Q3 Q2 Q1 OY

1 USA 161 113,564 2060 814 665 344 179 51 7

2 UK 75 21,794 928 415 308 137 54 13 1
3 Canada 51 8531 344 173 109 46 15 1 –
4 Netherlands 45 6338 311 144 119 32 14 2 –
5 Germany 42 4963 301 182 91 23 4 1 –
6 China 38 6430 421 278 111 23 8 1 –
7 Spain 38 5168 434 290 118 23 3 – –
8 Italy 38 4198 282 172 75 29 6 – –
9 France 37 6540 232 136 57 27 11 – 1
10 Singapore 36 5786 115 46 44 21 4 – –
11 Australia 35 4490 330 193 93 32 10 2 –
12 Taiwan 34 4417 371 216 140 15 – – –
13 Denmark 33 3667 159 97 39 21 1 1 –
14 Sweden 32 7607 197 102 66 22 3 4 –
15 Finland 31 3309 170 97 53 16 4 – –
16 South Korea 30 4326 184 113 47 21 3 – –
17 Switzerland 30 3022 135 81 40 10 3 1 –
18 Japan 27 9043 120 51 44 12 9 3 1
19 Belgium 25 2107 77 49 17 7 4 – –
20 Norway 24 1555 100 67 23 6 2 1 1
21 Israel 22 1284 51 19 23 6 3 – –
22 Austria 21 1443 78 40 31 4 3 – –
23 New Zealand 17 723 63 27 27 8 1 – –
24 Ireland 17 524 55 30 16 8 1 – –
25 Portugal 15 415 43 23 15 3 2 – –
26 Malaysia 13 567 75 60 15 – – – –
27 India 13 404 55 30 17 3 5 – –
28 Turkey 13 389 40 26 12 1 – 1 –
29 Greece 11 887 39 15 17 6 1 – –
30 Brazil 11 387 69 48 15 5 1 – –
31 Slovenia 10 252 28 14 14 – – – –
32 Mexico 10 241 22 8 14 – – – –
33 Russia 8 487 15 13 2 – – – –
34 Vietnam 8 180 17 9 7 1 – – –
35 South Africa 8 159 36 22 12 1 1 – –
36 Thailand 7 101 26 20 4 2 – – –
37 U Arab Emirates 7 96 24 17 5 2 – – –
38 Saudi Arabia 7 85 20 17 3 – – – –
39 Iceland 6 108 8 3 5 – – – –
40 Iran 6 104 34 25 9 – – – –
41 Chile 6 83 16 8 6 1 1 – –
42 Argentina 5 91 7 7 – – – – –
43 Egypt 5 70 7 3 2 2 – – –
44 Poland 5 56 15 12 2 1 – – –
45 Czech Republic 4 91 8 5 2 1 – – –
46 Serbia 4 47 10 7 3 – – – –
47 Cyprus 4 43 11 9 1 – 1 – –
48 Estonia 4 19 8 6 2 – – – –
49 Colombia 3 47 12 10 2 – – – –
50 Pakistan 3 11 7 2 5 – – – –

over time in terms of their academic production. The ranking is ordered the last five years, many countries around the world have expanded
based on the same criteria used previously. their participation in the field. However, there are also some countries
Note that most countries exhibit increasing productivity over time, that have decreased their productivity in the last five years (Q1): Israel,
but only 5 countries have originated scientific research in KM. Among Greece, Mexico, Iceland and Pakistan. Finally, the low productivity of
them is the USA, which is in first place, with 7 studies. In the same regions of emerging countries, such as Africa and Latin America, should
period, the UK, France, Japan and Norway began to publish in KM be highlighted. Although some of these countries have begun KM re-
literature, with the publication of one article each. Among these search, such as South Africa, Brazil, Mexico and Chile. That notwith-
countries, we should highlight the growing publication trend in both standing, and given the relevance of knowledge management to com-
the USA and UK. France, Japan and Norway, although they have per- panies' competitiveness, we expect more research from these emerging
formed research in the field, did not have strong productivity like the countries.
previously mentioned countries. It should also be noted that the Q2
period represents a significant leap in productivity in several countries, 3.2. Science mapping of the KM research
since almost all of the 50 most productive and influential countries in
KM research appeared in this period. Overall, it is noteworthy that in The previous section presents a fairly comprehensive performance

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 Table 17
Most cited documents among papers published on KM field.
Source: Elaborated based on WoS 2015.
R Cited reference Citations Total link strength Type

1 Cohen, WM, and Levinthal, DA., (1990). Absorptive capacity: a new perspective on learning and innovation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35, pp. 128–152 1445 1443.00 A
M. Gaviria-Marin et al.

2 Nonaka, I. and Takeuchi H., (1995). The knowledge-creating company: how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation. Oxford University Press. 1289 1275.00 B
3 Kogut, B. and Zander, U., (1992). Knowledge of the firm, combinative capabilities, and the replication of technology. Organization Science, 3(3), pp. 383–397 979 979.00 A
4 Grant, RM., (1996). Toward a knowledge-based theory of the firm. Strategic Manage Journal, 17(S2), pp. 109–122. 977 977.00 A
5 Nonaka, I., (1994). A dynamic theory of organizational knowledge creation. Organization Science, 5(1), pp. 14–37. 974 974.00 A
6 Szulanski, G., (1996). Exploring internal stickiness: impediments to the transfer of best practice within the firm. Strategic Management Journal, 17(S2), pp. 27–43. 809 809.00 A
7 Barney, J., (1991). Firm resource and Sustained Competitive Advantage. Journal of Management, 17(1), pp. 99–120. 707 706.00 A
8 Nelson, RR, and Winter, SG. (1982). An evolutionary theory of economic change. Harvard University Press. 672 672.00 B
9 Nahapiet, J. and Ghoshal, S. (1998). Social Capital, Intellectual Capital, and the Organizational Advantage. Academy Management Review, 23(2), pp. 242–266. 653 652.00 A
10 Davenport, TH., (1998). Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage what They Know. Harvard Business Press, pp. 199. 652 342.00 B
11 Polanyi, M., (1966). The Tacit Dimension. Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday. 561 559.00 B
12 March, JG., (1991). Exploration and exploitation in organizational learning. Organization Science, 2(1), pp. 71–87. 554 554.00 A
13 Teece, DJ., (1997). Dynamic capabilities and strategic management. Strategic Management Journal, 18(7), pp. 509–533. 554 554.00 A
14 Fornell, C., and Larcker, DF., (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research, 18(1), pp. 39–50. 505 505.00 A
15 Hansen, MT., (1999). The search-transfer problem: the role of weak ties in sharing knowledge across organization subunits. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(1), pp. 82–111. 499 499.00 A
16 Alavi, M., and Leidner, DE., (2001). Knowledge Management and Knowledge Management Systems: Conceptual Foundations and Research Issues. MIS Quarterly, 25(1), pp. 107–136. 471 464.00 A
17 Zahra, SA., and George, G., (2002). Absorptive capacity: a review, reconceptualization, and extension. Academy of Management Review, 27(2), pp. 185–203. 461 461.00 A
18 Podsakoff, PP., MacKenzie, SB., Lee, JY., and Podsakoff, NP. (2003), Common method biases in behavioral research: a critical review of the literature and recommended remedies. Journal 442 442.00 A
of Applied Psychology, 88(5), pp. 879–903.
19 Huber, GP., (1991). Organizational learning: the contributing processes and the literatures. Organization Science, 2(1), pp. 88–115. 438 438.00 A
20 Grant, RM., (1996). Prospering in dynamically-competitive environments: organizational capability as knowledge integration. Organization Science, 7(4), pp. 375–387. 436 436.00 A
21 Lane, PJ., and Lubatkin, M., (1998). Relative absorptive capacity and interorganizational learning. Strategic Management Journal, 19(5), pp. 461–477. 420 420.00 A
22 Gupta,AK., (2000). Knowledge flows within multinational corporations. Strategic Management Journal, 21(4), pp. 473–496. 409 409.00 A
23 Eisenhardt, KM., (1989). Building theories from case study research. Academy of Management Review, 14(4), pp. 532–550. 408 404.00 A

212
24 Nunnally, JC., (1978). Psychometric theory. McGraw-Hill, pp. 701. 406 403.00 B
25 Dyer, JH., and Singh, H., (1998). The relational view: cooperative strategy and sources of interorganizational competitive advantage. Academy of Management Review, 23(4), pp. 660–679. 402 402.00 A
26 Spender, JC., (1996). Making knowledge the basis of a dynamic theory of the firm. Strategic Management Journal, 17(S2), pp. 45–62. 382 382.00 A
27 Brown, JS., and Duguid, P., (1991). Organizational learning and communities-of-practice: toward a unified view of working, learning, and innovation. Organization Science, 2(1), pp. 380 378.00 A
40–57.
28 Powell, WW., Koput, KW., and Smith-Doerr, L., (1996). Interorganizational collaboration and the locus of innovation: networks of learning in biotechnology, Administrative Science 377 377.00 A
Quarterly, 41(1), pp. 116–145.
29 Tsai, W., (2001). Knowledge transfer in intraorganizational networks: effects of network position and absorptive capacity on business unit innovation and performance. Academy of 369 369.00 A
Management Journal, 44(5), pp. 996–1004.
30 Zander, U., and Kogut, B., (1995). Knowledge and the speed of the transfer and imitation of organizational capabilities: an empirical test. Organization Science, 6(1), pp. 76–92. 361 361.00 A
31 Tsai, WP., and Ghoshal, S., (1998). Social capital and value creation: the role of intrafirm networks. Academy of Management Journal, 41(4), pp. 464–476. 356 356.00 A
32 Granovetter, MS., (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), pp. 1360–1380. 340 339.00 A
33 Podsakoff, PM., and Organ, DW., (1986). Self-reports in organizational research: problems and prospects. Journal of Management, 12(4), pp. 531–544. 332 332.00 A
34 Mowery, DC., Oxley, JE., and Silverman, BS. (1996). Strategic alliances and interfirm knowledge transfer. Strategic Management Journal, 17(S2), pp. 77–91. 328 328.00 A
35 Burt, Ronald S., (1992). Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition. Harvard University Press, pp. 324. 327 326.00 B
36 Wernerfelt, B., (1984). A resource-based view of the firm. Strategic Management Journal, 5(2), pp. 171–180. 317 317.00 A
37 Hansen, MT., Nohria, N., and Tierney, TJ., (1999). What's your strategy for managing knowledge? Harvard Business Review, 77(2), pp. 106–116. 303 303.00 B
38 Hamel, G., (1991), Competition for competence and interpartner learning within international strategic alliances. Strategic Management Journal, 12(S1), pp. 83–103. 303 303.00 A
39 Argyris, C., and Schon, DA., (1978). Organisational learning: a theory of action perspective. Addison Wesley Longman Publishing Co., pp. 356. 303 302.00 B
40 Uzzi, B., (1997). Social structure and competition in interfirm networks: the paradox of embeddedness. Administrative Science Quarterly, 42(1), pp. 35–67. 300 300.00 A
41 Porter, ME., (1990). Competitive advantage of nations: creating and sustaining superior performance. Free Press, pp. 855. 298 296.00 B
42 Eisenhardt, KM., and Martin, JA., (2000). Dynamic capabilities: what are they?. Strategic Management Journal, 21(10/11), pp. 1105–1121. 294 294.00 A
43 Jaffe, AB., Trajtenberg, M., and Henderson, R., (1993). Geographic localization of knowledge spillovers as evidenced by patent citations. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 108(3), pp. 290 290.00 A
577–598.
(continued on next page)
Technological Forecasting & Social Change 140 (2019) 194–220
M. Gaviria-Marin et al. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 140 (2019) 194–220

Type analysis of KM research. To strengthen and complement this analysis,

science mapping is presented, which aims to show the structural and
A

A
A
A
A
A
B
dynamic aspects of a research field (Cancino et al., 2017; Merigó et al.,
2017). This analysis allows us to identify the main documents and
Total link strength

analyze the most representative structures and connections between the

actors that perform in this field (Blanco-Mesa et al., 2017; Martínez-
López et al., 2018). Note that this analysis is presented by using tech-
289.00
279.00
278.00
274.00
268.00
268.00
268.00
niques such as co-citation and the co-occurrence of keywords
(Valenzuela et al., 2017; Wang et al., 2018). In the latter technique, a
temporal analysis is added to observe how the conceptual structure
Citations

changes over time (Laengle et al., 2017), which allows us to observe the
variation of the research interests in different years (Merigó et al., 2018;
289
281
281
274
269
268
268

Tur-Porcar et al., 2018).

Mapping of the KM research begins by conducting a co-citation
Baron, RM., and Kenny, DA., (1986). The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51(6), pp. 1173–1182.

analysis. According to the taxonomy of the bibliometric techniques

presented by Cobo et al. (2011b), co-citations can be analyzed ac-
Anderson, JC., and Gerbing, DW., (1988). Structural equation modeling in practice: a review of recommended two-step approach. Psychological Bulletin, 103(3), pp. 411–423.

cording to the references of the authors and journals and the references
Argote, L, and Ingram, P., (2000). Knowledge transfer: a basis for competitive advantage in firms. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 82(1), pp. 150–169.

of the publications. This technique maps the structure of a research field

Reagans, R., and McEvily, B., (2003). Network structure and knowledge transfer: the effects of cohesion and range. Administrative Science Quarterly, 48(2), pp. 240–267.

using pairs of documents that are commonly cited together. Taking this
into account, the co-citation of references is presented first. The ana-
lysis is performed on the data presented in Table 17.
The most cited reference in KM research is that of Cohen and
Levinthal (1990) and the book of Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995). Note
that these data complement the results provided in Table 7. Ad-
Granovetter, M., (1985). Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness. American Journal of Sociology, 91(3), pp. 481–510.

ditionally, Table 18 presents other books that were highly cited in KM

Inkpen, AC., and Tsang, EWK., (2005). Social capital, networks, and knowledge transfer. Academy of Management Review, 30(1), pp. 146–165.

research.
Another interesting unit to analyze co-citations is through journals.
Co-citation of journals (McCain, 1991) seeks to identify journals that
are frequently cited. Fig. 3 presents information supporting this ana-
lysis, which is performed using a threshold of eight hundred citations
and one hundred most representative connections.
Observe that the most relevant journals in KM research have an
orientation on the field of management. The centrality of the SMJ and
OSC spheres indicates that they are the journals that lead KM research,
Miles, MB., and Huberman, AM., (1994). Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook. SAGE, pp.338.

and therefore, they possess a wide network of connections. Finally,

keep in mind that this result is consistent with the results presented in
Table 4.
Another unit that is analyzed using the co-citation technique is
authors. Analysis of the co-citation of authors (White and Griffith,
1981) seeks to show the structure and connections of authors who are
cited together more frequently. Fig. 4, which presents the results of this
analysis, is developed with a threshold of four hundred citations and the
one hundred most representative connections.
Fig. 4 corroborates the relevance of Nonaka in the KM research. The
size of its sphere and its centrality in the figure stand out from the other
authors. However, the figure shows other relevant authors who are
strongly connected, such as Cohen, Grant, and Kogut, among others.
Note that these results are consistent with the results presented in
Table 18.
Another interesting issue is the co-occurrence of keywords.
According to Callon et al. (1983), analysis of the co-occurrence of
keywords uses keywords and seeks to study the conceptual structure of
a field of research. Given the stages of development that the KM field
has undergone (Serenko, 2013), it is interesting to conduct this analysis
from a general point of view, taking into account a longitudinal fra-
mework and observing the main concepts studied in each KM stage.
Abbreviation: A: Article, B: Book.

Fig. 5 presents the general co-occurrences of keywords between

1961 and 2015, with a threshold of forty co-occurrences and the one
hundred most representative connections.
There is a great diversity of concepts, among which knowledge
Cited reference
Table 17 (continued)

management, knowledge transfer, knowledge sharing, innovation, and

organizational learning are the words most frequently used in the field.
To observe how the use of these keywords evolves over time, Figs. 6, 7
and 8 present the co-occurrences of keywords between 1985–1995,
1996–2005 and 2006–2015. It should be noted that the thresholds for
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
R

these figures are one, six, and thirty-five co-occurrences, respectively.

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M. Gaviria-Marin et al. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 140 (2019) 194–220

Table 18
Most cited books among papers published on KM field.
Source: Elaborated based on WoS 2015.
R Cited reference Citations word Total link strength

1 Lave J. Wenger E. (1991). Situated learning: legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge University Press. 266 266.00
2 Leonard-Barton D. (1995). The wellsprings of knowledge. Harvard Business School Press. 265 265.00
3 Cyert RM. March JG. (1963). A behavioral theory of the firm. Prentice-Hall. 263 263.00
4 Penrose E. (1959). The theory of the growth of the firm. Oxford University Press. 259 259.00
5 Chesbrough H. (2003). Open Innovation: the new imperative for creating and profiting from Technology. Harvard Business School 242 204.00
Press.
6 Polanyi M. (1962). Personal knowledge: towards a post-critical philosophy. University of Chicago Press. 238 237.00
7 Hofstede G. (1980). Culture's consequences: international differences in work-related values. Sage Publications. 234 232.00
8 Williamson OE. (1985). The economic institutions of capitalism. Collier Macmillan. 231 231.00
9 Wenger E. (1998). Communities practice. Cambridge University Press. 226 224.00
10 Argote L. (1999). Organizational learning creating, retaining and transferring knowledge. Kluwer Academic. 214 214.00
11 von Hippel E. (1988). The sources innovation. Oxford University Press. 192 192.00
12 Senge P. (1990). The fifth discipline: the art & practice of The learning organization. Doubleday/Currency. 188 184.00
13 March JG. Simon HA. (1958). Organizations. Wiley. 186 186.00
14 Schumpeter J. (1934). The theory of economic development: an inquiry into profits, capital, credit, interest, and the business cycle. 183 183.00
Harvard University Press.
15 Allen TJ. (1977). Managing the flow of technology. MIT Press. 169 169.00
16 Thompson JD. (1967). Organizations in action; social science bases of administrative theory. McGraw-Hill. 167 166.00
17 Coleman J. (1990). Foundation social theory. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 156 156.00
18 Porter M. (1980). Competitive strategy: techniques for analyzing industries and competitors. Free Press. 144 142.00
19 Weick KE. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. SAGE. 140 140.00
20 Pfeffer J. (1978). The external control of organizations. Stanford University Press. 139 138.00
21 Wasserman S. (1994). Social network analysis: methods and applications. Cambridge University Press. 138 138.00
22 Drucker PE. (1993). Post capitalist society. HarperBusiness. 136 134.00
23 Stewart TA. (1997). Intellectual capital: the new wealth of organizations. Doubleday. 126 126.00
24 von Krogh G. Ichijo K. Nonaka I. (2000). Enabling knowledge creation: how to unlock the mystery of tacit knowledge and release the 118 118.00
power of innovation. Oxford University Press.
25 Lawrence PR. Lorsh JW. (1967). Organization and environment: managing differentiation and integration. Harvard University. 113 113.00
26 Galbraith J. (1973). Designing complex organizations. Addison-Wesley Pub. Co. 97 97.00
27 Berger P. (1966). The social construction of reality: a treatise in the sociology of knowledge. Doubleday 90 90.00
28 Edvinsson L. (1997). Intellectual capital: realizing your company's true value by finding Its hidden brainpower. HarperBusiness 90 89.00
29 Wenger. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice: a guide to managing knowledge. Harvard Business School Press. 89 89.00
30 Schumpeter JA, 1942, Capitalism, socialism and democracy 83 83.00

Fig. 3. Mapping of co-citation of journals.

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M. Gaviria-Marin et al. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 140 (2019) 194–220

Fig. 4. Mapping of co-citation of authors.

Fig. 5. Mapping of co-occurrences of keywords (1961–2015).

Note that in the first decade of analysis, keywords are clustered by 4. Conclusions
different topics of interest, among which knowledge acquisition and
expert systems stand out, which are connected to concepts in the area of The objective of this work is to present an overview of KM research
information systems. In the following decades, it is observed that in the areas of business and management through an exhaustive bib-
knowledge management is the keyword most frequently used and that liometric analysis. This analysis used the two main bibliometric
it connects strongly with the rest of the keywords (see Figs. 7 and 8). methods, namely, performance analysis and science mapping. The first
method uses several measures and bibliometric indicators, such as the

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M. Gaviria-Marin et al. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 140 (2019) 194–220

Fig. 6. Mapping of co-occurrences of keywords (1985–1995).

Fig. 7. Mapping of co-occurrences of keywords (1996–2005).

h-index, number of citations and productivity to evaluate the im- including journals, articles, authors, institutions and countries. The
portance, impact and quality of publications in a particular field. results were obtained through use of the WoS, which is a bibliographic
Science mapping aims to complement performance analysis using co- database that is widely regarded as the most influential in the scientific
citation techniques and co-occurrences of keywords from a temporal community.
perspective. This analysis was conducted using the VOSviewer soft- From an overall perspective, this study shows that KM research in
ware. In addition, to gain a broader view of this field, these bibliometric business and management has experienced spectacular growth in recent
methods were used, taking into account various dimensions of analysis, years. The USA is the absolute leader in KM research and has the best

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M. Gaviria-Marin et al. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 140 (2019) 194–220

Fig. 8. Mapping of co-occurrences of keywords (2006–2015).

indicators of influence and productivity in all of the dimensions that we entrepreneurship literature. Argote has published several articles fo-
analyzed. This result was to be expected since the USA is usually the cusing on isolation in different phases of the KM process. Finally, as
absolute dominator of investigations in other scientific areas. The UK expected, the vast majority of the main researchers are European and
has also shown considerable productivity and influence in KM. North American.
However, many other countries have increased their productivity and In relation to the journals, we found that the KM literature has been
influence in KM due to the emergence of various research groups published in a large number of scientific journals with different theo-
around the world. For example, although they have some longevity in retical orientations. OSC and the SMJ are the most influential journals
the field, countries such as Spain, Canada and China have achieved in this field. It is also observed that the Top Management journals
remarkable growth in the last 10 years, and today, they are among the (TMG), in general, are the most influential, given their high volume of
10 most productive countries in KM research. Other cases, such as citations. Once again, our science mapping and analysis of journals co-
Japan, Singapore and Sweden, are also notable since with less pro- citations gives robustness to these results. In addition, these results are
ductivity, they have managed to be quite influential. understandable because there is a general tendency among researchers
With respect to institutions, the USA again has the largest number of to consider these journals' publications as the most prestigious. On the
universities, and its influence in the field is therefore quite dominant. other hand, the most productive journals in this field are the JKM, IJTM
The most prominent American universities in the field of KM include and KMRP. However, these journals have not achieved a level of cita-
the University of North Carolina, the University of Maryland-College tions and h-index commensurate with other journals. Other journals
Park, Harvard University and the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, that have achieved excellent levels of the h-index in KM research are
among others. The UK is again in second place. The University of RPC, MSC, JMS, JIBS and MQY.
Cambridge, the University of Manchester and the University of According to the bibliometric analyses, this work is useful for ob-
Warwick are the British universities with the best indicators of pro- taining an overview of the state of knowledge management research in
ductivity and influence in the field. In general, the most influential the areas of business and management. However, there are several
universities are located in North America and Europe. Although there limitations that need to be considered. First, the information presented
are several influential and renowned Asian researchers in this field, in this work is purely informative and only provides a general or-
universities in this region have not been able to position themselves ientation of the field with respect to the various dimensions that have
strongly in the field. been analyzed. We analyzed some specific types of academic publica-
With regard to individual researchers, based on performance ana- tions obtained from the WoS, namely, articles, reviews, letter and notes.
lysis, it appears that Nonaka is, by far, the most influential researcher in In addition, it is important to consider that along with the WoS, there
this field of research. This author is considered one of the fathers of are other, equally important databases that may contain excellent
knowledge management. Science mapping, specifically co-citation publications in other journals that are not indexed in the WoS.
analysis of authors and documents, corroborates and gives strength to Therefore, considering the above, other equally important references
these results. We also found researchers who are quite productive and may not have been included in the performance analysis, which is also
influential, including Audretsch and Von Krogh. In general, from both the case with some highly cited books by Nonaka or Polanyi. However,
bibliometric methods, it is possible to observe that a large number of our work also includes science mapping that seeks to complement and
authors are related to this field of research. According to Holsapple and give robustness to the results as well as to help partially overcome the
Wu (2008), KM offers a unifying basis for several disciplines. It is likely, mentioned limitations. Other limitations are related to non-English
in this sense, that the field's versatility has allowed many authors to speaking researchers. Only documents in English were selected in our
apply KM theory to their research in business and management. For document. We must consider that most of the documents in languages
example, Audretsch has applied part of this theory in the other than English are not included in the WoS (Merigó et al., 2016)

217
M. Gaviria-Marin et al. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 140 (2019) 194–220

and therefore are not analyzed in this paper. Another limitation that field in the business and management areas. Their importance lies in
should be mentioned is related to indicators, such as the h-index. Al- the information presented in a complete manner and in considering
though some advantages were mentioned in the text, one of the main different perspectives so that each reader understands the data ac-
limitations of the h-index, for example, is that it does not benefit highly cording to his/her own interests and priorities.
cited researchers with moderate productivity. Therefore, readers should Finally, it should be noted that quantifying and classifying the lit-
observe the data of this indicator with caution and take into account the erature of a field as extensive as KM is not simple. Excluding other
other measures and indicators presented in each analysis. Second, the research topics, such as conference proceedings, can make this task
limitations of the WoS database are also transferred to this study. For more complicated. In addition, the nature of the different research
example, one limitation is that the complete counting system in which disciplines that intersect with the KM field may have different char-
papers attributed to multiple authors or affiliations tend to be more acteristics and may lead to different interpretations and conclusions
important in the analysis compared to those papers that appear with a that those presented in this study. Therefore, future research should use
single author. Science mapping performed with the VOSviewer was bibliometric methods to analyze the intersection of the KM field with
used to neutralize this limitation since it uses a fractional counting other disciplines.
system. The similarity and consistency between the results obtained
from the analysis of performance and science mapping analysis allow us Acknowledgements
to conclude that there is no significant deviation between the two
methods of counting. Although researchers must take these limitations We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable
into account, this paper identifies the most significant results of the KM comments, which have improved the quality of the paper.

Appendix 1. Acronyms of tables

R Acronym Description
1 % APKM Percentage of articles published in KM (TPKM / TAP)
2 % KM Percentage of articles published in KM (TPKM / TPKM-BM)
≥500, ≥200, ≥100, ≥50, ≥500, ≥200, ≥100, ≥50: articles with more than 500, 200, 100 and 50 citations and articles
3
<50 with less than 50 citations
4 5Y-IF Impact factor Index 5 Years /// impact index for the last 5 years
5 ACKM Articles cited in knowledge management
6 C Name of country
7 C/Y Citations / Year
8 HKM H Index based exclusively on knowledge management research
9 HRJ Journals grouped to their orientation toward human resources
10 IF Impact factor 2015 Index
11 INNJ Journals grouped to their orientation toward innovation
12 ISYS Journals grouped to their orientation toward information systems
13 J Abbreviated journal names
14 JGT Journals grouped by theme
15 OPJ Journals group classificated as other journals within the business and management
16 OY 1984-1990
17 PCKM Average citations by article in knowledge management
18 Q Quinquennium
19 Q1 1991-1995
20 Q2 1996-2000
21 Q3 2001-2005
22 Q4 2006-2010
23 Q5 2011-2015
24 MPRJ Group of the three journals with most productivity
25 T50 Articles in the Top 50
26 TAP Total articles published by the journal
27 TC Total number of citations in all areas
28 TCKM Total number of citations in knowledge management research
29 TMGJ Group of journals ranked as the top 10 journals in business and management
30 TP Total Papers in all areas
31 TPKM Total papers in knowledge management
32 TPKM-BM Total papers in knowledge management in the business and administration area
33 TPKM / PMH Total number of papers KM divided by the total millions of inhabitants of the country
34 TCKM / PMH Total number of citations KM divided by the total millions of inhabitants of the country
35 TPKM-BM Total papers in business and management
36 YP Year of publication

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