Scholarly communities in entrepreneurship research:: A co-citation analysis

A debate persists about the distinctiveness of entrepreneurship research. Entrepreneurship research is seen as fragmented and its results are considered noncumulative, handicapping the evolution of the field as a respected scholarly discipline. In this article we conduct a bibliometric analysis to shed light on these issues. We analyze co-citation patterns of entrepreneurship-related articles published in the years 2000 to 2004 and identify the 25 most central research streams in entrepreneurship. We describe these groups and investigate their mutual relationships. Although the United States represents by far the greatest source of entrepreneurship articles, other countries represent significant sources of research in specific streams.