Relationship of digital and industrial aspects in economic research from the position of bibliometric analysis based on EconLit

• Main Authors: Lychagin Mikhail, Lychagin Anton
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University 2021-04-01
• Series: Научно-технические ведомости СПбГПУ: Экономические науки
• Subjects: bibliometric analysis; digitalization; industry studies; publication activity; jel classification; new research directions
• Online Access: https://economy.spbstu.ru/article/2021.88.03/
• ISSN: 2304-9774; 2618-8678

The reviews of scientific economic literature show a growing complexity of interrelationships between subject areas and discord among different types of publications, registered editions and subject classifications. At this landscape, the need to comprehend the digitalization trends is becoming more and more acute. This paper presents the results of bibliometric analysis of more than one and half publications indexed in the EconLit electronic bibliography from the position of digital and industrial aspects and interrelation between them. The records, in which the title contains the terms “digital” or “digitization”, “online”, “smart”, “mobile”, “internet”, “computer” or “computing”, “telecommunication” and “software”, supposed to be as “digital aspect”. The publications of “industrial aspect” belong to 37 JEL micro categories of four-meso categories with the title “Industry Studies” (L6 Manufacturing. L7 Primary Products and Construction. L8 Services. L9 Transportation and Utilities). The paper contains a set of indicators for assessment of the digitalization degree of publications reflected in EconLit in 1991–2020. These indicators help to discover the “points of growth” at the intersections of digital and industrial aspects in the research object and subject framework. The presented results showed that the world economic literature continues to pay more attention to the problems and methods of digitalization. Analysis of publication activity by sub-periods of 1991–2020 helped to single out four terms (online, digital, smart, mobile) with a pronounced increase in activity. Examples of some notable publications illustrate the most interesting trends. The highest values of “digitalization rates” are in the category L63 Microelectronics, computers, communications. The digitalization rates above average are in L8 Service, where the leader is L86 Information and Internet Services; Computer Software. L7 Primary Products and Construction makes only first steps along digitalization way. The thoughts about future research developments accomplish the main text of article.