Telecommunications policy agenda in the digital age: An analysis of Telecommunications Policy publications in the 21st century

As Telecommunications Policy (TP), a flagship journal in telecommunications and ICT policy, approaches its 50th anniversary, this is an opportune moment to offer a retrospective and prospective review of its published research. This paper uses bibliometric analysis and journal profiling methods to examine the evolution of research published by TP from 2000 to 2024, as the world enters a new stage of the information era and digital innovation is transforming the telecommunications landscape, while sustainable development has become a central policy concern. Against this background, TP's publication scope increasingly centers on the impact of digitalization on the economy and society. This study analyzes TP's publication output, author productivity, scholarly impact and collaboration, citation impact, methodological trends, geographical distributions, and thematic structure, providing an empirical basis for examining thematic evolution. The analysis covers 1641 academic articles. The findings highlight TP's important role in shaping telecommunications and ICT policy research, supporting digital equity and advancing global sustainability. The findings show that since the mid-2010s, the journal's thematic focus has shifted from regulation-competition-investment to privacy, digitalization, AI, and 5G, as evidenced by the keyword co-occurrence, thematic map, and trend-topic analysis. The co-authorship network reveals a polycentric but fragmented structure with few bridging ties, while the co-citation network identifies three major intellectual communities. TP's agenda has evolved from infrastructure and market design to a digital policy paradigm shaped by data and innovation.