E-commerce literature trend forecasting: A study of bibliometric methodology

This paper surveys e-commerce (EC) technology trends and forecasts using bibliometric analysis from 1989 to 2009 with topic as “e commerce” in SSCI database. The bibliometric analytical technique is used to examine the topic in SSCI journals from 1989 to 2009, based on the scope of 2655 literatures of EC. This paper implemented and classified EC literatures using the seven categories for different distribution status in order to explore how EC technology trends and applications have developed in this period. Also, the paper will perform K-S test to verify the reliability of Lotka´s Law. The analysis provides a roadmap to guide future research and abstract the trend information so that EC researchers can save some time since core knowledge will be concentrated in core categories. This implies that the phenomenon “success breeds success” is more common in higher quality publications.