Missing finance in social impact bond research? A bibliometric overview between past and future research

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Abstract

This paper provides a bibliometric review of 156 articles published between 2011 and 2021 on social impact bonds (SIBs). We identified five research streams, namely studies that: (i) place the origins of SIBs in the neo‐liberalism framework; (ii) consider SIBs as an evolution of the new public management approach; (iii) focus on conceptualizing SIBs as an impact investment approach rooted in the social finance landscape; (iv) look at SIBs as a funding source for social entrepreneurship; and (v) detect an emerging phenomenon labeled as sustainable financial partnerships for the SDGs. Our results suggest that the current literature is strongly based on those that we have defined as a sort of UK influence, which is dominating the scientific perspective and the current use of SIBs, and that there is still less “finance‐based” research in this field. We conclude by proposing areas for future research.

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Is Open Access

Software survey: VOSviewer, a computer program for bibliometric mapping

Nees Jan van Eck, Ludo Waltman (2011)

We present VOSviewer, a freely available computer program that we have developed for constructing and viewing bibliometric maps. Unlike most computer programs that are used for bibliometric mapping, VOSviewer pays special attention to the graphical representation of bibliometric maps. The functionality of VOSviewer is especially useful for displaying large bibliometric maps in an easy-to-interpret way. The paper consists of three parts. In the first part, an overview of VOSviewer’s functionality for displaying bibliometric maps is provided. In the second part, the technical implementation of specific parts of the program is discussed. Finally, in the third part, VOSviewer’s ability to handle large maps is demonstrated by using the program to construct and display a co-citation map of 5,000 major scientific journals.