A scientometric analysis of e-participation research

Purpose Due to the increasing demand for public services, as a new form of public governance, e-participation has emerged. Scholars from various disciplines have published plenty of research results on e-participation. This paper aims to reveal the research status frontiers directly by mapping knowledge domains. Design/methodology/approach The authors take 1,322 articles on e-participation published in Web of Science from 2001 to 2017 as research object. They then run the information visualization software CiteSpace to drill deeper into the literature data. Findings The study found that e-participation research has the obvious interdisciplinary feature; the author and institution cooperation networks with less internal cooperation are relatively sparse; the USA ranks first in the field of e-participation research, followed by the UK, with the other countries lagged behind; and e-participation through social media is gradually becoming the new research focus. Originality/value Based on the objective data and information visualization technology, the research intuitively reveals the research status and development trend of e-participation.