Bibliometrics and systematic reviews: A comparison between the Proknow-C and the Methodi Ordinatio

Abstract This research aims to analyze and compare the selection of relevant papers by two bibliometric methods, namely, the Knowledge Development Process-Constructivist (Proknow-C) and the Methodi Ordinatio, which were also discussed in terms of common steps, limitations and underlying assumptions. Particularly, the topic of knowledge management in small and medium-sized enterprises was chosen in order to illustrate the application of these two methods that support systematic reviews. Besides descriptive indexes such as citations and journal impact, co-citation analysis was employed to examine selected papers. The results showed that both methods possess a high agreement rate in terms of selecting recent articles, but a low agreement rate regarding relevant/seminal articles, besides revealing a strong bias of the Methodi Ordinatio towards recent articles when the alpha constant is 10. Particularly, recent papers (up to two years of publication) represent about 80 % of top-50 InOrdinatio ranked articles. The co-citation analysis of the 46 selected articles (29 recent; 17 relevant) corroborated the methods capacity to select relevant articles. Finally, further bibliometric reviews in other topics may benefit from the common steps, limitations and underlying assumptions discussed in this research for selecting and analyzing relevant papers.