Influential and intellectual structure of Islamic finance: a bibliometric review

Purpose: Islamic finance is an alternative approach of financial intermediation based on risk-sharing and asset-backed operations, which evolved substantially in recent years in academic research raising the need for quantitative studies to address the intellectual development and scientific performance of this field. This study aims to provide quantitative statistics and comprehensive review of the key influential and intellectual structure of Islamic finance literature. Design/methodology/approach: The authors apply the trending and cutting-edge quali-quantitative approach of bibliometric citation analysis. This study reviews 1,940 English studies and review papers published in scientific journals indexed by the Scopus database from 1983 to 2019. RStudio, VOSviewer and Excel’s software are used to analyze the collected data and apply the bibliometric tests. Findings: The results identify the leading academic authors, journals, institutions and countries with relation to Islamic finance. The authors also propose six main research themes in this field, which are as follows: Islamic finance – fundamentals, growth and legitimacy; customer’s attitude and perception toward Islamic finance; accounting and social reporting of Islamic finance; performance and risk management of Islamic finance; Islamic financial markets; and efficiency of Islamic financial institutions. Lastly, the authors identify research gaps in the existing Islamic finance literature and present 24 future research directions. Research limitations/implications: The data in this study is confined only to the Scopus database of English papers and reviews. It also considers papers directly related to the field of Islamic finance. Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first to address the literature of Islamic finance from a bibliometric aspect. The results of this study along with future research questions will help researchers and practitioners to further explore and stand on firm quantitative bases regarding the scientific development of Islamic finance.