Developmental trajectories of blockchain research and its major subfields

Abstract

Unlike previous reviews, most of which focus on a field and use qualitative methods to analyze blockchain technology, herein main path analysis was used to determine the key route of citations and identify the developmental trajectories of blockchain technology and its major themes. A total of 3159 blockchain-related articles published through August 5, 2019, were gathered from the Web of Science. In all, 2478 articles formed the citation network, 27 of which were on the key route. These 27 key papers on blockchain represented the four developmental stages. Stage 1 focused on challenges to bitcoin. Stage 2 focused on smart contract issues. Stage 3 focused on opportunities, challenges, and development in blockchain. Finally, Stage 4 focused on smart contract applications, especially in e-healthcare, where blockchain technology is paving the way to a quicker, more secure, and more efficient means of storing and accessing medical data. The Girvan-Newman clustering technique was used to classify articles, and keyword analysis was used to analyze the top six major themes. These were bitcoin security, bitcoin financial applications, e-healthcare, Ethereum smart contracts, security and privacy in IoT, and energy. Main path analysis was also used to analyze their developmental trends. The results have significant value for both academics and practitioners.