Text mining and network analytics for literature reviews: Exploring the landscape of purchasing and supply management research

In this paper, we state and debate the use and usefulness of text similarity and network analytics using natural language processing for our field. While previous reviews of Purchasing and Supply Management have relied on manual coding and classification, the large scale and variety of the field calls for new approaches. In this Notes and Debates article, we therefore review different approaches from bibliometric and scientometric studies to explore literature using (semi)automated approaches. We exemplify one approach, leveraging text similarity and network visualization, to complement earlier analysis. Along the way, we discuss the researcher’s role at critical vantage points in reviews that are augmented by natural language processing. We compare and contrast the results of this exploration to previous manual reviews and sketch opportunities and provide recommendations for future use.