Thirty years of Small Business Economics: a bibliometric overview

In 2018, Small Business Economics (SBE) celebrated its 30th anniversary. This study commemorates this event by conducting a retrospective examination of the journal using bibliometric analysis and showing how SBE has evolved and developed. The findings show that SBE has increased its productivity and reputation as measured by the number of published articles and citations per year, respectively. Most SBE contributions and co-authorships come from authors in the USA and Europe. Bibliographic coupling of articles reveals that major areas covered by the journal are entrepreneurship, self-employment, innovation, and financing small firms. Other topics include the impact of small firms on the economy, technology, innovation, employment, industrial structure, and factors affecting entrepreneurs. SBE’s co-authorship network has expanded greatly spanning across continents.