A Bibliometric Study of Soft Systems Methodology, 2001 – 2021

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to conduct a bibliometric study of soft systems methodology for community research analysis of twenty years (2001 – 2021) of trends in Soft Systems Methodology for community research topics. The literature was extracted and analyzed using the Web of Science database. VOSViewer software was used to identify and visualize key trends, influential authors, and journals. The 157 filtered documents were selected based on three main criteria which are (i) Topics on Soft Systems Methodology or Soft System Methodology and community, (ii) Type of documents on ‘Article’, and (iii) Year Published within 2001 to 2021. We conducted several types of analyses on the body of research using VOSViewer which are (i) Co-authorship analysis, (ii) Co-occurrence analysis, (iii) Citation analysis, and (iv) Co-citation analysis. The main contribution and motivation for this study are in the form of a conceptual framework of Soft Systems Methodology for community research topics in guiding future research and projects in supporting relevant five UN Sustainable Development Goals agenda on (i) ‘Quality Education’, (ii) ‘Sustainable Cities and Communities, (iii) ‘No poverty’, (iv) ‘Good Health and Well-Being and (v) ‘Zero Hunger’. There are five major keyword clusters concerning Soft Systems Methodology and community research (2001 – 2021), that we had determined based on the theme clusters which are (i) ‘Methodology’ oriented-keywords, (ii) ‘Community’ oriented-keywords, (iii) ‘Future’ oriented-keywords, (iv) ‘sustainable development’ oriented-keywords on, and (v) ‘Systems’ oriented-keywords themes.