The Evolution of Blockchain: A Bibliometric Study

Abstract

Blockchain as emerging technology is revolutionizing several industries, and its abundant privileges have opened up a bunch of research directions in various industries; thereby, it has acquired many interests from the research community. The rapid evolution of blockchain research papers in recent years has resulted in a need to conduct research studies that investigate a detailed analysis of the current body of knowledge in this field. To address this need, a few review papers have been published to report the latest accomplishments and challenges of blockchain technology from different perspectives. Nonetheless, there has not been any bibliometric analysis of the state of the art in blockchain where Web of Science (WoS) has been taken into consideration as a literature database. Hence, a thorough analysis of the current body of knowledge in blockchain research through a bibliometric study would be needed. In this paper, we performed a bibliometric analysis of all Blockchain's conference papers, articles, and review papers that have been indexed by WoS from 2013 to 2018. We have analyzed those collected papers against five research questions. The results revealed some valuable insights, including yearly publications and citations trends, hottest research areas, top-ten influential papers, favorite publication venues, and most supportive funding bodies. The findings of this paper offer several implications that can be used as a guideline by both fresh and experienced researchers to establish a baseline before initiating a blockchain research project in the future. INDEX TERMS Blockchain, bibliometric study, Web of Science. I. INTRODUCTION Since the innovation of Bitcoin, a digital cryptocurrency, in 2008 [1], Blockchain technology has positioned itself in the focal point of interest among a diverse range of researchers and practitioners. Blockchain is a decentralized ledger that stores all transactions that have been made on top of a peer-topeer network in a secure, verifiable and transparent way. The main advantage of Blockchain over the existing technologies is that it enables the two parties to make transactions over the Internet securely without interference of any intermediary party. The omission of the third party can reduce the processing cost while improving the security and efficiency of transactions. Due to the considerable amount of benefits that Blockchain can bring in every industry, its significance level has been compared to the role of the Internet in the early 1990s [2]. Blockchain is revolutionizing various industries, ranging from finance [3]-[5], Internet of Things (IoT) [6]-[11], The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Maurizio Tucci.

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