Academic research output on social capital: a bibliometric and visualization analysis

PurposeThis study describes and analyzes the output of academic research on the topic of social capital. The concept of social capital has attracted the interest of scholars from a range of academic disciplines, and it has been applied to explain a variety of phenomena.Design/methodology/approachUsing the bibliographic approach, I analyzed aggregate data obtained from the Web of Science database. The analyses were carried out using VOSviewer software.FindingsThe results show social capital to be a topic of interest in multiple fields of academic research. The findings highlight the important role that journals, including those from disciplines other than the social sciences, have played in divulging this concept, and show that some countries and institutions are more productive and engage in more collaborative research efforts than others.Research limitations/implicationsThe main implications of this study regard research on social capital. The results demonstrate how social capital continues to interest scholars from a variety of academic disciplines. Future bibliometric research should include other sources (literature databases) and be expanded to consider other types of publication.Originality/valueThis paper furthers previous research by exclusively focusing on the concept of social capital. It analyzes the international trend in publications up until the end of 2021, thus expanding the publication period considered in previous studies. The results of this study highlight the relevance of bibliometric tools for assessing research performance.