Accepted Manuscript

Research Landscape of Business Intelligence and Big Data

Analytics: A Bibliometrics Study

Ting-Peng Liang , Yu-Hsi Liu

PII: S0957-4174(18)30309-9
DOI: 10.1016/j.eswa.2018.05.018
Reference: ESWA 11971

To appear in: Expert Systems With Applications

Received date: 13 May 2018

Revised date: 14 May 2018
Accepted date: 16 May 2018

Please cite this article as: Ting-Peng Liang , Yu-Hsi Liu , Research Landscape of Business Intelli-
gence and Big Data Analytics: A Bibliometrics Study, Expert Systems With Applications (2018), doi:
10.1016/j.eswa.2018.05.018

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Research Landscape of Business Intelligence and Big Data Analytics:

A Bibliometrics Study

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Ting-Peng Liang1
Department of Information Management

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National Sun Yat-Sen University
Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Email: [email protected]
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Yu-Hsi Liu2
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Institute of Economics
Academia Sinica
Taipei, Taiwan
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Email: [email protected]
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1
Corresponding author; National Chair Professor and Director of Electronic Commerce Research
Center, National Sun Yat-Sen University, No. 70, Lianhai Road, Gushan District, Kaohsiung City,
Taiwan 80444. [email protected]. 886- 07-5252000 ext. 4781
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Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, No. 128, Section 2, Academia Rd,
Nangang District, Taipei City, Taiwan 11529. [email protected]

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Abstract

Business Intelligence that applies data analytics to generate key information to

support business decision making , has been an important area for more than two
decades. In the last five years, the trend of “Big data” has emerged and becomes a
core element of Business Intelligence research. In this article, we review academic
literature associated with “Big data” and “Business Intelligence” to explore the
development and research trends. We use bibliometric methods to analyze

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publications from 1990 to 2017 in journals indexed in Science Citation Index
Expanded (SCIE), Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) and Arts & Humanities

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Citation Index (AHCI). We map the time trend, disciplinary distribution,

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high-frequency keywords to show emerging topics. The findings indicate that
Computer Science and management information systems are two core disciplines that
drive research associated with Big data and Business Intelligence. “Data Mining”,

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“Social Media” and “Information System” are high frequency keywords, but “Cloud
Computing”, “Data Warehouse” and “Knowledge Management” are more emphasized
after 2016.
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Keywords: Bibliometrics, Big Data analytics, Business Intelligence, research trend.

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1. Introduction

The rapid proliferation of information and communication technology has resulted in

a rapid growth of digitized data and has also brought significant attention on research
opportunities in big data analytics and business intelligence in management, social
science, and humanity. The trend of big data and analytics for business intelligence
provide great resources and powerful methodology to support the data-driven
decision-making process, which is the core of “Business Intelligence.” Many
enterprises today are utilizing big data to optimize their business intelligence process,

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while the academic research related to Big Data and Business Intelligence has thrived.
The number of research papers is increasing very fast. Research topics range from

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concepts, methodologies, applications, and management. Hence, it is valuable to

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provide an overview of the published research so that interested scholars can easily
know the research profile so far.

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For this purpose, we conducted a Bibliometric study to examine the academic
research output related to “Big Data” and “Business Intelligence” and analyzed
publication data obtained from Web of Science, that includes papers indexed in
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Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), Arts
& Humanities Citation Index (AHCI), and Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI).
The data period is from 1990 to December 31, 2017. Indexed publications with key
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words of “Big Data” and “Business Intelligence” in their title, abstract or subject are
retrieved and analyzed. Findings are then presented.
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2. Research Background
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Both “Big Data” (BD) and “Business Intelligence” (BI) are fast growing key words in
recent academic research. While “big data” becomes popular recently, “business
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Intelligence” was proposed much earlier. Luhn (1958) began to use the term
“Business Intelligence” to describe an automatic system that disseminates information
and supports decision-making process. The concept was later assimilated into the area
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of decision support and information systems. For instance, Vitt, et al (2002) defined
business intelligence as a multifaceted concept that includes three different
perspectives: making better decision faster, converting data into information, and
using a rational approach to management (p.13). They define a BI cycle to include
four phases: analysis, insight, action, and performance measurement. Turban, et al.
(2005) further expanded BI to cover data warehouse, data acquisition, data mining,
business analytics, and visualization.

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The term “Big Data” was not mentioned until 2011. Berry (2011) first proposed the
significance of “Big Data” to management in an academic publication. At the same
time, McKinsey & Company (Manyika et al, 2011) also addressed that the technology
and platform of “Big Data” had become a vital factor to enhancing a firm‟s
productivity and competitiveness. After these two seminal works, the publication of
“Big Data” has booted exponentially.

In fact, BD and BI research has a substantial area of overlap, especially in

Management-related fields. In general, BD emphasizes the data aspect that includes

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data collection, storage and analytics, while BI focuses more on data analysis,

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visualization and applications for business decision making. Previous research in
these areas have significant overlap. For example, Tanev, et al. (2015) applies web

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search and online data reduction techniques to assess the value of product-enabled
services. He, et al. (2015) analyzed social media data to obtain competitive
intelligence. Griva, et al. (2018) analyzed market basket data to segment customers. In
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addition to marketing research, Moro, et al. (2015) summarized applications of text
mining for business intelligence in banking. Sun, et al. (2014) examined business
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intelligence in real estates. Chung (2009) studied the effect of visualization in
business intelligence. Brichni, et al. (2017) proposed a method to evaluate business
intelligent systems. Above sample papers show the diversity of BD and BI research in
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recent years. They also indicate the value to provide a more comprehensive snapshot
of research related to BD and BI.
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3. Research Methodology

In order to have a more comprehensive profile of BD and BI, we built our data set
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from Web of Science, an online subscription-based scientific citation indexing service

originally produced by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), now maintained
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by Clarivate Analytics (previously the Intellectual Property and Science business of

Thomson Reuters). We built the database and used the Bibliometrics methodology to
map the time trend, the disciplinary distribution, the high-frequency keywords, the
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citation patterns and the topic evolutions of the related academic outputs. Citespace
and VowsViewer were used to conduct the Bibliometric study.

Bibliometrics is a research methodology in the library and information science field.

It is a statistical and quantitative analysis of academic outputs. It includes not only
descriptive statistics but also network analysis on keywords, texts, citations, authors,
institutions and their connection. Frequency, connection, centrality and cluster of
authors and texts are investigated. Researchers use Bibliometrics to explore the

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publication trend, knowledge base, citation pattern, author network, reader usage,
impact and importance of a subject or a paper.

The bibliometric analysis allow us to answer the following questions:

 How the academic outputs related to “Big Data” and “Business Intelligence”
have grown and evolved in the last decade?
 How research topics change and evolve in these academic outputs?
 Which discipline drives the related research?

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 Who are major contributors toward these outputs? Which paper is the most

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influential?
 What are the most-cited references to these outputs?

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Our search using “big data” and “business intelligence as key words resulted in the
database that includes 10,637 publications associated with “Big Data” and 1,168
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publications associated with “Business Intelligence.” Among these documents, 141
publications contain both “Big Data” and “Business Intelligence.”
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4. Time Trend of Publications

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The first analysis is publication trend. Figure 1 shows the time trend of “Big Data”
and of “Business Intelligence.” Less than 38 academic outputs of “Big Data” were
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found until 2011. The number increased to 92 in 2012 and multiplied very quickly
afterward. In the single year of 2016, the number of BD publications went up to 3,287.
In contrast to “Big Data”, the number of BI publications stayed relatively stable over
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the years. The trend of “Business Intelligence” started long before 2012, and
increased to 48 in 2008, much higher than that of BD. However, the number only
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increased to 183 in 2016. This may be because BD as a technology has a much

broader research coverage than BI that focuses on business applications.
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We also examine the 141 papers that simultaneously include “BD&BI” as key words .
Figure 2 shows the time trend of BD&BI publications. The number of these
publications significantly increased to 32 in 2015 and continued to grow, but it is still
not comparable to that of BD papers. The reason behind the small publication number
could be that although the applications of BI and BD usually overlap, most papers
may choose to show their major orientation as either technical or managerial. Another
possibility is that big data is much of a buzzword that has been used extensively in
commercial outlets also, while business intelligence is more restricted to certain

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business domains. Hence, most papers prefer BD over BI.

The Time Trend of Related Research

4500
4000 "Big Data"
3890
THE NUMBER OF PAPERS

3500 "Business Intelligence"

3287
3000
2500

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2000 2143

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1500
1000 1009
54 85 396
500 41

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48 159 183 192
0 11 5 82 94
22 92
2008 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
PUBLISHED YEAR

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Figure 1: Time Trend of BD and BI Research
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The Time Trend of Related Research
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"Big Data" & "Business Intelligence" 57
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THE NUMBER OF PAPERS

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37
30 32

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10 8
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0 1
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2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

PUBLISHED YEAR
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Figure 2: Trend of Research with both BD and BI

Table 1 presents the statistics of document types in the data set. Our data set include
publications of article, editorial material and book reviews. Among the 10,637
publications of “Big Data”, 77.52% are articles, 10.63% are editorial materials, and
6.58% are reviews. Among the 1144 publications of “Business Intelligence”, 89.97%
are articles. For “BD&BI” research, 85.1% are article. In Table 1, the summation of
the percentages may exceed 100% and the record count may exceed the total number

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of the publications because the Web of Science sometimes categorizes a publication

into two different types.

Table 1 Type of the Publications

Document Big Data Business Intelligence Big Data &
Type Business Intelligence
Count % Count % Count %
Article 8429 77.52% 1067 89.97% 120 85.10
%

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Editorial 1156 10.63% 35 2.95% 8 9.22%

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material
Review 716 6.58% 35 2.95% 13 5.67%

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Book review 98 0.90% 17 1.43% - -
Meeting abstract 309 2.84% 18 1.52% - -
Proceedings
paper
194 1.78%
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5. Major Keywords and Topics

Table 2 summarizes the high frequency keywords of the “Big Data” and “Business
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Intelligence” publications. The keywords are listed in descending order of frequency.

Among the 10,637 “Big Data” publications, the top 5 associated keywords are
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“model”, “algorithm”, “system”, “MapReduce” and “cloud computing”. Among the

1,168 “Business Intelligence” publications, the top five keywords are
“management”, “data warehouse”, “big data”, “data mining” and “systems.”
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Although a few keywords such as “data mining”, “social media” and “management”
are overlapped, we see significant discrepancy between these two groups of research.
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BD-related keywords are more emphasize on algorithm and computing, while

BI-related keywords are more focused on management and decision support systems.
The evidence is consistent with our argument that BD is more technical whereas BI is
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more application-oriented.

Table 2 High-Frequency Keywords in Related Publications

High Frequency Keywords
Literature of "Big Data" Literature of "Business Intelligence"
Key Words Occurrences Key Words Occurrences
model 549 management 109
algorithm 480 Data Warehouse 104
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system 401 big data 84

MapReduce 389 Data Mining 91
cloud computing 376 systems 81
management 363 model 79
networks 347 performance 66
information 308 data analytics 61
Classification 307 knowledge management 54
Data Mining 280 information 52
Machine Learning 262 social media 46

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performance 262 information systems 44

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social media 255 design 40
privacy 240 olap 39

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internet 233 web 38
surveillance 215 decision support system 37
data analytics
hadoop
prediction
205
186
181
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information technology
business analytics
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optimization 176 decision making 26
internet of things 167 design science 26
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Figure 3 shows the visualized cloud of keywords in the 10,637 BD publications.

Important keywords are highlighted with larger fonts, while the color of a keyword is
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determined by the cluster to which the keyword belongs. Lines among key words
indicate the strongest co-citation links between keywords. “Big Data” is the center of
the cloud since it is the search key. Consistent with Table 2, “model”, “algorithm”,
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“system”,” “cloud computing”, “management”, “networks” and “information” are all

highlighted key words. In the tag cloud, five main clusters labeled by different colors
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belong to 5 different main areas. The red cluster is formed by healthcare area
publications, and the green cluster belongs to computer science area. “Business
Intelligence” is on the top front belonging to the yellow cluster. The yellow cluster
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mainly belongs to the management field. “Business Intelligence” is directly linked

with “management”, “data analytics” and “predictive analytics”, while “knowledge
management” is bigger in the same cluster.

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Figure 3 Visualization of Major Keywords in „Big Data” Literature

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Figure 3. Word Cloud of Associated Key Words

6. Evolution of Keywords and Topics

The 10,637 BD publications covered a wide range of fields. To be more focused, we

give a closer look at the 141 publications with both BD and BI as key words. Among
these BD&BI publications, “Management” is the most frequent keyword, followed by
“Big Data Analytics”, “Data Mining”, “Social Media” and “Information System”.
Figure 4 shows the evolution of high-frequency keywords in chronological order. The

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timeline shows that “Cloud Computing”, “Data Warehouse” and “Knowledge

Management” are more emphasized in 2016 and 2017. Compared to the keywords
such as “Data Mining”, “Text Mining” and “Data Science” in 2014, research focus
has shifted after 2016.

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Figure 4 Evolution of top keywords in “BD&BI” publications

Given the popularity of BD and BI, many special issues on these topics have been
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published. The publication of special issues may be another way to observe research
evolution as special issues show interests of academic journals. Figure 3 shows the
journal special issues that we found. MIS Quarterly (2012) published the first Special
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Issue on Business Intelligence Research to identify the evolution and applications of

Business Intelligence & Big Data (Chen et al., 2012). Papers in this special issue
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utilize text analysis, web analysis, network analysis in finance, bank, customer service
and other industries. Most other special issues are published in or after 2016. For
instance, IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics (2016) published a special issue on “Risk
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Intelligence in Big Data Era”. This special issue highlights how to build an effective
data-oriented risk analytics system (Wu et al., 2016). Most recently in December 2017,
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Information System Frontier (Huang et al.,2017) also published a special issue that
emphasized more on cloud-based issues such as cloud storage and cloud computing.
This trend toward cloud-based issues echoes to the evolution of keywords over time.
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Expert Systems with Applications publish this special issue on big data analytics for
business intelligence in 2018. A special issue focused on the strategic value of big
data analytics will appear in the Journal of Management Information Systems in 2018.

Table 3 Special Issues on Big Data and Business Intelligence

Name of the Journal Publish Date Topic and Title
MIS Quarterly 2012 Business intelligence research
IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics 2016 Risk Intelligence in Big Data Era
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Business intelligence and big data

Information Technology Tourism 2016
in the travel and tourism domain
Brand marketing, big data and
social innovation as future
Journal of Marketing Management 2016
research directions for
engagement
IEEE Computational Intelligence Computational Intelligence for
2016
Magazine Big Social Data Analysis
Big data and analytics in

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MIS Quarterly 2016
networked business

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Big Data Analytics and Business
Information Systems Frontiers 2017
Intelligence in Industry

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Does Big Data Mean Big
Knowledge? Knowledge
Journal of Knowledge Management 2017

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Data and Analytics
Big Data Analytics for Business
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Expert Systems with Applications 2018
Intelligence
Strategic Value of Big Data
Journal of Management Information
2018 Analytics for Business
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Systems
Intelligence
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To further examination of BD research in social science and humanity journals, 2819

papers among the 10,637 BD publications were identified and analyzed. Figure 5
shows the time-line view of keywords in the citation networks of these 2,819
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publications.
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The keyword coded as "0" is "cardiovascular disease", the earliest subject coming out
with the papers published before 2013. It shows that medical-related issues are where
BD started in social sciences. It also echoes the fact that health care service is the
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most important field for BD applications. This is probably due to the availability of
healthcare data from insurance companies and hospitals.
Among the ten topics in Figure 5, we can see that the topic of “agenda setting” (#4)
may have come to an end. Research on agenda setting was documented as early as
2007 and became popular in 2009. In 2014, there were still many papers referring to
"agenda setting" (the circle size reflects popularity of publication), but almost none
was cited after 2015. It may indicate that the studies involving "agenda setting" in BD
had come to an end.
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Figure 5 Timeline View of the “Big Data” Cited Network
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Figure 5 also shows that "business failure" (#2), “online user review" (#7) and
"supply chain" (#3) are areas that have attracted attentions continuously. These three
long-lasting key words are all important topics in management field. “Business
Failure” reached a peak referential period in 2012 and had been published as latest as
2016. "Supply chain" has been constantly discussed and cited in every time period
and is one of the few items still being investigated in 2017 and 2018, though the
number of relevant papers is smaller than other subjects. “Online user review” has
less citations than “business failure” and “supply chain”, but is still cited and

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discussed from the beginning to 2016.

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7. Disciplinary Distribution and Major Journals

Another issue we may look into is the disciplines involved in BD and BI. We use
special issues published by research journals as our evidence. Table 4 summarizes the
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academic fields of eight special issues on BD and BI. Three journals fall into the
Computer Science field, and the others are related to Information Science and
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Management. This implies that Computer Science has been the core discipline that
drives the research on BD and BI, while information science and management are also
important disciplines.
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Table 4 Journals that Publish Special Issues on BD and BI

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Publish
Name of the Journal Academic Fields
Date
2012
MIS Quarterly Computer science, Information systems, Management
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2016
IEEE Transactions on
2016 Computer science, Cybernetics, Artificial intelligence
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Cybernetics
Information Technology
2016 Information Systems, Tourism
Tourism
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Journal of Marketing
2016 Management, Marketing
Management
Information Systems Computer science, Information systems, Theory &
2017
Frontiers methods
Journal of Knowledge
2017 Information science & Library science, Management
Management
Expert Systems with Computer science, artificial intelligence, Engineering,
2018
Applications Operations research & management science
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Journal of Management
2018 Information systems, Management
Information Systems

Table 5 presents the top 10 journals that published the highest number of BD and BI
papers in descending order. We can find that these two groups of journals have
overlaps, but their top lists are quite different. Compared to BI papers mainly
published in computer science journals, information system and management journals,
BD papers were published in more diversified journals that emphasized
interdisciplinary applications. Three journals are specific to BD and claimed to be

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multidisciplinary. To sum up, journals that publish BI research are more related to

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management fields while journals that publish BD research are broader.

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Table 5 Major Journals Which Published Most Big Data and Business
Intelligence Research

Journal
IEEE access
Big Data
Counts
124
Associated Fields
Computer Science,
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Business Intelligence
Counts Associated Fields
Computer science-artificial
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Information Systems, Expert Systems intelligence, Engineering,
38
Electrical & Electronic with Applications Operations research &
Engineering Management science
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Plos One 102 Multidisciplinary Computer science- artificial

Social Sciences intelligence, information
Decision Support
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35 systems,
Systems
Operations research &
management science
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Future Generation 98 Computer science Lecture notes in

26 Computer science
Computer Systems -theory & methods Computer Science
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Big data 85 Computer Science- Information

Computer science-
interdisciplinary Systems 23
information systems
applications Management
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Concurrency and 84 Computer International

Computation-Practice science-software Journal of Information science &
21
& Experience engineering, theory & Information library science
methods Management
Cluster Computing: 77 Computer science- Journal of
the Journal of theory & methods Computer Computer science,
15
Networks, Software information systems Information information systems
Tools and Systems
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Applications
Neurocomputing 75 Computer science Knowledge Based Computer science-
14
-artificial intelligence Systems artificial intelligence
Agro FOOD Industry 69 Biotechnology &
Industrial
Hi Tech Applied Microbiology; Computer science-
Management & 13
Food science & Engineering-industrial
Data Systems
technology
Journal of 64 Computer
Supercomputing science-hardware & International

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architecture, theory & Journal of Data Computer science- software

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13
methods; Warehousing and engineering
Engineering-electrical Mining

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& electronic
Information Sciences 55 Computer science- Computer science-
Information
information systems
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12 information systems
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8. Major Authors and Influential Publications

Our dataset allows us to find most influential authors and most cited papers among
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these 141 BD & BI publications. Table 6 lists the publications with the most citation
and centrality in the academic networks. “Citations” are the frequency of being cited
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in the whole data bank, while “Links” is the frequency of being linked among the 141
BD-BI publications Both Citations and Links measure publication importance and
author influence.
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Table 6 Most Cited Publications

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Links
Citations
(Among the
Publication (in WOS Data
141
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Bank)
Publications)
Chen et al. (2012) 634 50
Wang et al. (2015) 162 9
Tien, J. M. (2013) 41 4
Chang, Y. W., Hsu, P. Y., & Wu, Z. Y. (2015) 29 3
Freire et al. (2016) 46 0
He et al. (2015) 25 2
Fuchs et al. (2014) 24 2
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Kwon & Sim (2013) 22 0

Marine-Roig & Clavé (2015) 21 2
Arnott & Pervan (2014) 14 2

Table 6 shows that, among these 141 BD & BI publications, Chen et al. (2012) is the
most influential paper with 634 times of citations and involvement in 50 links. This is
because it is the position paper of the first special issue published in MIS Quarterly.
The second influential publication is Gandomi, et al. (2015), followed by Tien et
al.(2013) and Chang et al. (2015). These are important literature and the knowledge

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base for later BD & BI research.

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Figure 6 Visualization of the Bibliographic Coupling Network

Figure 6 visualizes the bibliographic coupling network of the BD&BI publications.

Bibliographic coupling measures the similarity relationship of publications based on
their reference. Two papers are “coupled” when they both cite a third work in
common. Two documents are bibliographically coupled if they both cite one or more
documents in common. As in the citation network, Chen et al. (2012) is the core
literature in the BD & BI bibliographic coupling network. Tien (2013) and Fernández

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(2014) are also significant nodes with high popularity. This supports the previous
argument that these three papers are important to BD&BI literature.

9. Future Research Directions

Given the profile indicated in previous analysis, we are able to identify a few key
directions for future research. Figure 7 shows a general framework that divides
research topics into four dimensions: technology, applications, management, and
impact. Within each dimension, many possible topics need to be further explored.

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The technology dimension, for instance, includes issues related to data collection,

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storage, analytics, and integration infrastructure. For example, sentimental analysis
needs to collect and analyze textual data properly. Technology for parsing the

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collected textual data properly and defining positive or negative emotion are also key
research issue.

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Figure 7. Framework for BD and BI Research

Application issues are those associated with applying certain technology to a specific
domain. For instance, business applications are oriented toward profit making, while
medical applications may focus more on accuracy or calculation efficiency. Risks
involved in different application domains may be important too. For example,
marketing plan derived from inaccurate segmentation of customers may cause

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monetary loss but prescription from wrong patient diagnosis may result in loss of life
that is totally unacceptable. Hence, researchers need to take concerns unique to
application domains into consideration when they conduct BD/BI research.

Management issues include factors that affect the adoption of BD/BI technology, the
cost-benefit assessment when the technology is to be adopted, security and privacy
issues involved in BD/BI, and organizational readiness (e.g., human resources) of
adopting BD/BI. A number of theories related to the adoption of information
technologies are available. They are helpful in investigating why BD/BI is adopted or

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not adopted. Security and privacy issues are big concerns as well from the

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management perspective.

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The impact of BD/BI is another dimension that has not yet been thoroughly studied.
Most previous research focus on the positive side of BD/BI for promoting the
technology, but has yet to prove the value creation from BD/BI or the avoidance of
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negative impact. Most existing case reports are based on anecdotal evidence. We need
more large-scale research to verify the value of BD/BI, both strategic and managerial
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values. We also need research to investigate the impact (both positive and negative) of
BD/BI on individual life, organizational operations, and social activities. For instance,
how would location or traffic data of users collected from mobile Apps (e.g., Google
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map) may enhance the safety (or police beat) in a community with minimum invasion
into individual privacy.
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10. Concluding Remarks

This paper reports results from a bibliometric analysis on published academic papers
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associated with “Big data” and “Business Intelligence”. Using CiteSpace, VOSViewer
and descriptive statistics, we analyzed publication data from 1990 to 2017 in journals
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indexed in Science Citation Index, Social Science Citation Index and Arts &
Humanities Citation Index. A total of 10,637 publications with “Big Data” as key
words and 1,168 publications with “Business Intelligence” as key words were
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identified and analyzed. The time trend, their disciplinary distribution, high-frequency
keywords and topic evolutions of these academic outputs have been reported.

A few major findings have been found. First, although “Business Intelligence”
emerged long before “Big Data” and has grown steadily, its growth rate is below that
of BD publications, which has increased explosively after 2013. This reflects the huge
interests in BD research in recent 5 years.

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Second, BD and BI papers appeared in different journals. BD papers were published

in Computer Science oriented technical journals, while BI papers mainly appeared in
management and information systems journals. Coverage of research topics related to
BD are broader and more interdisciplinary than those of BI papers.

Third, interested topics also differ as observed by the difference in popular keywords.
High frequency keywords associated with BD research are related to algorithm and
computing, while those associated with BI research are more focused on management
and decision support. In Big Data literature, the keyword “Business Intelligence” is

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directly linked to “management”, “data analytics” and “predictive analytics”, which

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shows the nature of BI research.

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Fourth, a few papers have been well-cited and become knowledge core of BD and BI
research. From the citation of 141 papers with both BD and BI as keywords, we find
Chen et al. (2012) to be the most popular one. Tien (2013) and Fernández (2014) are
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also significant nodes. “Data Mining”, “Social Media” and “Information System” are
high frequency keywords, while keyword “Cloud Computing”, “Data Warehouse” and
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“Knowledge Management” emerged in 2016 and 2017.

Finally, a few directions for future research has been proposed. Scholars interested in
M

BD and BI research may follow the framework shown in Figure 7 of this paper to
position their research. Journal editors may think of what research topics fit journal
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themes when they accept papers for publication.

Acknowledgements: This research was partially funded by grants to the first author
PT

from the Ministry of Science and Technology under grant number

MOST-106-2420-H-110-014, the Ministry of Education‟s Global Research Center of
CE

Intelligent E-Commerce, and Research Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences
of Ministry of Science and Technology.

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