Blockchain research in accounting and auditing through bibliometric and science mapping analysis

Blockchain technology is increasingly reshaping industrial and organizational processes through its capacity to enhance transparency, traceability, automation, and data integrity. Within accounting and auditing, blockchain has emerged as a disruptive digital infrastructure capable of transforming financial reporting, assurance practices, governance mechanisms, and sustainability-related disclosure systems. Despite rapidly growing scholarly attention, the intellectual structure, interdisciplinary evolution, and emerging trajectories of blockchain research in accounting and auditing remain fragmented and insufficiently mapped. This study addresses this gap through a large-scale scientometric analysis of 322 peer-reviewed publications indexed in Scopus between 2017 and 2024. Using Bibliometrix and VOSviewer, the study examines publication and citation trends, leading authors, journals, institutions, and countries, international collaboration patterns, keyword co-occurrence networks, and the major thematic clusters represented in the literature. The findings reveal a rapidly expanding and globally interconnected research domain characterized by four dominant thematic areas: blockchain adoption in accounting and auditing, the impact of blockchain adoption on accounting and auditing practices, blockchain-enabled sustainability and governance, and the future integration of blockchain with artificial intelligence, Industry 4.0, and data-driven auditing environments. The analysis further identifies emerging research frontiers related to digital governance, continuous auditing, cybersecurity, intelligent supply chains, and technology-enabled accountability systems. The study contributes by providing a comprehensive computational overview of blockchain-enabled accounting ecosystems and by identifying critical knowledge gaps, interdisciplinary linkages, and future research directions relevant to researchers, regulators, audit firms, and technology-driven organizations. The findings highlight blockchain’s growing role as a foundational infrastructure for next-generation industrial and financial information systems.