Robotic Process Automation (RPA) – Bibliometric Analysis and Literature Review

Abstract This article aims to identify the main approach to robotic process automation (RPA) method and trends in the scientific literature in the field of RPA. Moreover, this analysis is needed to build a model of automation of a certain class of business processes. The author focuses on an analysis of publications from 2012 to 2022, collected from the Web of Science, Scopus, and IEEE Xplore databases. The methodology includes source selection, main search limited to RPA, narrowing criteria, adding criteria for subject area, cluster analysis, and limitation to RPA shortcut to achieve most to the point results. The study presents analysis of publication year, type of publication, cluster analysis, as well as the most cited articles. The cluster analysis allowed identification of four primary areas for which publication analysis was conducted. The main value resulting from the creation of this article is the cluster analysis of the most cited publications in the context of RPA seen in the topics of artificial intelligence and digital transformation. On the top of that, it proves how well RPA is defined as a method and whether description of the RPA implementation model is available.