Comprehensive Exploration of Social Organization Literature in Chinese by Bibliometric Analysis from 1994 to 2014

Abstract

A bibliometric analysis is applied in this research to evaluate the trends of social organization research between 1994 and 2014 in published Chinese literature of all subject categories from China National Knowledge Infrastructure ( CNKI ) database. Document types, publication patterns, subject categories, journal articles, top cited papers, and long-term distribution of keyword networks are thoroughly examined. Bibliographic information is used to summarize the overall research trends, themes, and academic trajectorys of this research area. The study indicates that over the past 20 years, the development of China’s social organization research has four stages. In addition, both theoretical and practical explorations of China’s social organization research are growing progressively with a shift of research focus from Westernization to localization, from civil society to public service, and from small independent researchers to a discourse system of significant scale.