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Mapping the knowledge domain and the theme evolution of appropriability research between 1986 and 2016: a scientometric review

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Abstract

The scholars in the research domains of innovation and strategic management concerned about the appropriability for about 30 years or more. They focused on appropriability research and constantly evolving. In this paper, we analyze 30 years (1986–2016) literature on appropriability studies from Web of Science Core Collection database. A cited reference clustering map of different periods and terms co-occurrence map have been generated using bibliometric analysis and content analysis. Based on this, we study the evolutionary trajectory, mechanisms and theoretical architecture of appropriability research and explore further research directions. The results indicate that the essence of the appropriability research evolution is the perception changes in opening and sharing, value creation and value growth, and future research is focusing on role of appropriability in the platform governance, generative appropriability and the evolution of the problem-solving mechanisms.

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Notes

  1. Version 5.0.R1.

  2. Version 1.6.7.

  3. The structured abstract labels and copyright statements were ignored.

  4. The “Time Slicing” is set from 1986 to 2016, the “Years Per Slice” is 1 year, the “Node Types” is “Cited Reference”, and the “Selection Criteria” is “selected top 50 most cited or occurred items from each slice”, the “Minimum Spanning Tree” is used as the modified algorithm to pruning.

  5. The cluster labels were extracted from keywords and LLR algorithms were used to generate the terminology.

  6. We use “Fisheye View” functioning to spread out the crowded display so that we can observe each cluster’s activity in more detail than before.

  7. We normalized scores through “Divide by mean”. It means scores of items are normalized by dividing each score by the mean score of all items.

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from several sources: the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71472061; No. 71172193) and Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (No. 20130161110032).

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  1. Business School, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082, China

    Yaowu Sun & Yi Zhai

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Sun, Y., Zhai, Y. Mapping the knowledge domain and the theme evolution of appropriability research between 1986 and 2016: a scientometric review. Scientometrics 116, 203–230 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2748-0

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