Personnel Review at age 50: a retrospective using bibliometric analysis

Abstract

PurposePersonnel Review (PR) is a leading human resource management journal. The article endeavors to provide a retrospective of the journal to commemorate the journal's 50th anniversary.Design/methodology/approachThe article employs a variety of bibliometric analysis techniques such as performance analysis, co-authorship analysis, bibliographic coupling, and negative binomial regression to provide a retrospective of PR.FindingsThe performance analysis suggests that PR has grown steadily in PR's publications and citations. Though most of PR's contributions originate from Europe, a geographical shift toward global contributions has been witnessed in recent years. Besides that, a culture of collaboration among PR authors has manifested and proliferated over time. Though a third of European studies are qualitative and more than 90% of Asian studies are quantitative, PR studies, as a whole, are moving away from conceptual and qualitative to empirical and quantitative research. Next, the bibliographic coupling of the PR corpus indicates five major themes—namely, human resource management policies and practices; personnel competency, experience, and well-being; career management and employee engagement; strategic human resource management; and organizational culture and workplace environment. Finally, the negative binomial regression reveals that article age, abstract and article length and number of keywords and references significantly drive PR citations.Originality/valueThe article represents the inaugural retrospective of PR.