Trends and Contributions in Islamic Economics Research: A Decade Bibliometric Analysis of Four Journals in Scopus Database

Abstract

Research strengthens a discipline, and it has an enormous impact, locally and globally. Moreover, it  provides solutions to human problems for the wellbeing of all. The rapid growth of scientific research in Islamic economics and the increase in the poverty rate among Muslim communities necessitated the urgent need to assess the trends in its knowledge construction and make future research in line with its aims to address current problems. On this reflection, bibliometric research was conducted on four influential Islamic economics journals in the Scopus database from 2010 to 2019. The study identified the productivity of the discipline and examined the most frequently covered topics, most cited articles and most contributing authors, institutions and countries. The aims are to examine and evaluate the trends in Islamic economics research, analyze the contents and topics in relation to the primary objectives of the discipline, and recommend future research trends based on current realities and objectives. The initial database search reveals 638 documents from the four journals, of which 612 are article have met the research criteria. The results of the bibliometric analysis reveal that the research focuses mainly on Islamic banking and finance as compared to Islamic social finance, with corporate social reporting of Islamic financial institutions receiving the attention of researchers, while social finance such as Zakāh and Waqf, which has a direct impact on the wellbeing of the poor, has been neglected. This could therefore be a gap in research aimed at achieving the discipline's primary objective of ensuring welfare and not at encouraging a new version of capitalist ideology that pays too much attention to profit maximization ideology.