25 years of Information Technology and Management: a bibliometric retrospective

Abstract A 25-year bibliometric retrospective of Information Technology and Management (ITM) characterizes publication growth, citation structure, knowledge foundations, and thematic evolution. A Scopus corpus of 398 citable documents (articles, reviews, and conference papers) for 2000–2024 underpins all ranked performance tables and keyword analyses, complemented by WoS (2007–2024) for science-mapping networks in VOSviewer. The workflow follows a SPAR-4-SLR design and combines productivity and impact indicators with co-citation (journals and documents), bibliographic coupling (documents, authors, institutions, and countries), and keyword co-occurrence analyses implemented via VOSviewer and bibliometrix/biblioshiny, alongside SciVal topic-cluster signals for 2015–2024. Results show stepwise changes in annual output, with a pronounced expansion around 2011–2012 and subsequent stabilization. Citation distributions are highly skewed, with early cohorts containing the strongest outliers and the highest citation density, while recent cohorts exhibit tighter dispersion consistent with shorter citation windows. ITM’s citation canon is anchored in trust, privacy, technology adoption, and IT value creation, while high-velocity recent contributions align with payments, logistics, analytics, and domain-specific IS applications. WoS co-citation structures place ITM at the intersection of core IS journals, decision analytics, enterprise/industrial systems, and behavioral/marketing outlets. Country and institutional patterns indicate a persistent US hub and a marked post-2012 rise in China, reinforcing a dense US–China collaboration axis. SciVal topic clusters highlight strong recent alignment with globally prominent fronts in digital consumer behavior and digital innovation, with particularly high field-weighted impact in recommendation-oriented and selected human-centered analytics clusters. Collectively, the findings firmly position ITM as a mature, internationally integrated journal with durable socio-technical pillars and evolving methodological and topical breadth.