Bibliometrics Analysis of Bankruptcy Prediction Trends in MSMEs: Global Insights from (2020–2025)

The purpose of this study is to map the development of research on bankruptcy prediction in Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) during 2020–2025 and to identify major scientific trends, influential authors, and dominant methodological approaches. Using a bibliometric method, data were collected from the Scopus database, producing 144 initial documents that were filtered into 23 final publications based on relevance and open-access availability. Performance analysis and science mapping were carried out using VOSviewer through co-authorship, co-citation, and keyword co-occurrence networks. The findings reveal four main research clusters: (1) financial-ratio-based distress models, (2) machine-learning approaches for SME risk prediction, (3) post-pandemic MSME resilience, and (4) credit scoring using non-financial indicators. Scientometrics is identified as the most influential journal, while Edward I. Altman and Alessandro Giannozzi emerge as central scholars. The United States, Italy, and the United Kingdom appear as the most collaborative and productive countries. The novelty of this research lies in its specific focus on MSME bankruptcy prediction during the post-pandemic era, the use of an open-access-filtered dataset, and the identification of emerging thematic clusters. However, this review is limited to Scopus-indexed, English-language, and open-access publications, which may exclude relevant studies from other sources.