Evolution of digital economy research: A bibliometric analysis

As a new economic form, the digital economy has become an important manifestation of national comprehensive strength, which is an absolute key force to enhance international competitiveness and reshape the international economic landscape in the digital era. Hundreds of schools of thought contend on the digital economy, and a consensus theory and framework has not yet been formed. In order to clarify the development venation and research status of the digital economy, and highlight the key points of digital economy research field in the future, this paper conducts bibliometric analysis and visualization by using Cite Space on digital economy connotation and extension mainly from four respects: the period characteristics of published articles, the distribution characteristics of articles, the characteristics of keyword changes, and the evolution characteristics of research directions. We take the WOS Core Collection as the database, and sets the subject headings with the digital economy connotation and extension as the retrieval target, and finally obtained 918 and 10,735 articles respectively as of 2022. We find that (a) the research on the connotation of the digital economy has experienced a long incubation and germination period, while the denotation period has maintained a long period of popularity, and both have ushered in a research climax in recent years; (b) the research team on the connotation of the digital economy is relatively scattered, and there is no unified consensus on the connotation of the digital economy, while the connection between the denotation period teams is relatively close; (c) from the perspective of keywords, “internet” and “big data” have caused a local upsurge in digital economy research. Otherwise, the denotation period hotspot of the digital economy is about 15 years earlier than the connotation research on average, which provides fertile soil for the formation, development and maturity of the digital economy connotation; (d) judging from the citation frequency of references, the total number of research articles on the connotation of the digital economy published after 2017 is relatively high and relatively concentrated, and a consensus on the understanding of the connotation of the digital economy has begun to form; (e) from the perspective of the evolution of research directions, “Information Science Library Science”, “Computer Science” and “Government Law” are the research hotspots in recent years, and “Public Administration” and “Engineering” may be the research growth points in the next few years.