Cloud Computing Research Profiling: Mapping Scholarly Community and Identifying Thematic Boundaries of the Field

The aim of the study was to map the scholarly community interested in research on cloud computing and to identify thematic boundaries of the field. The methodology of research profiling, representing bibliometric descriptive studies, was applied to achieve the aim of the study. Using research profiling for mapping the cloud computing field can be considered as an innovation. Although the research profiling methodology has been widely used across various subject areas, including Computer Science, Social Sciences, Engineering, Arts and Humanities, Business, Management and Accounting, and Psychology, thus far neither Scopus nor Web of Science indexed publications including the conjunction of phrases “cloud computing” and “research profiling” in their titles, keywords and abstracts. The previous important scientometric study of the research output in the field was published by Heilig and Vos in 2014. Taking into account a very dynamic growth of the field, all this indicates the research gap to be filled. The research sample is made of 14,158 publications indexed in Scopus database comprising the phrase “cloud computing” in their titles. The study was purposely limited to the title search to concentrate the attention of publications relating directly to the issue of cloud computing. Applying the quantitative approach provides an opportunity for broad scanning of subject-related literature. First, general publication profiling recognized the main contributors (countries, research intuitions, source titles and authors) to the scholarly community interested in cloud computing. Secondly, subject area profiling was applied to find how multidisciplinary is the research in the field and how the research output is distributed across subject areas. Finally, topic profiling unveiled leading topics of studies in the field and their distribution by authors, journal, subject areas and core references.