A Bibliometric Analysis Using Scopus Database of the Literature on Creative Accounting Trends

This article aims to provide a bibliometric analysis of creative accounting research published in the Scopus database from 1986 to 2022 to trace the development of scientific activities that can pave the way for future studies by shedding light on the gaps in the field. The analysis focuses on 161 creative accounting-related papers published in the Scopus database over 60 years, drawing upon a bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer. This paper highlights the mainstream of the current research in the creative accounting field, based on the Scopus database, by presenting a detailed bibliometric analysis of the trend and development of creative accounting research in the past two decades, including journals, authors, countries, institutes, co-occurrence, and author's keywords. The findings imply that creative accounting researchers do not use broad relevant theories and findings from studies beyond their clusters. Another result is that developing nations continue to be underexplored in terms of earnings management research due to a lack of trust representation and a lack of appropriate investigators. Finally, the data analysis identifies a number of potential research issues to be investigated regarding creative accounting development, which serve as raw material for future research. Once again, this study provides a framework for firms to build and implement creative accounting development plans.