Introduction

International Entrepreneurship (IE) is a recognized research field that has emerged from the study of the international activity of new firms. This phenomenon has been studied for some decades as a result of globalization and technological advances, which have prompted the rapid geographic expansion of new firms as a result of the large number of international competitors in an increasingly global marketplace (Felzensztein 2016). McDougall (1989) was one of the first researchers to provide evidence of such companies and to define the new field of IE. However, several researchers believe that the starting point of the IE field was not until the publication of the article by Oviatt and McDougall (1994), which focused on the internationalization of new ventures, which has been facilitated by advances in communication and transportation technologies and mainly by the changing role of the entrepreneur. According to Autio (2005), this new approach opened up a completely new direction in international business research, which ultimately led to what is known today as International Entrepreneurship.

It is well known that IE arises at the intersection of two major areas of knowledge - International Business and Entrepreneurship (McDougall and Oviatt 2000). Since its inception, IE has been characterized as a field of research that has withstood continuous changes both in its definition and its domain (Keupp and Gassmann 2009). Thus, what began on the basis of the internationalization of new firms has expanded to the current study of entrepreneurial internationalization in all types of companies, regardless of age or size (Oviatt and McDougall 2005). Thus, IE is now defined as:

…the recognition, formation, evaluation, and exploitation of opportunities across national borders to create new businesses, models, and solutions for value creation, including financial, social, and environmental... (Zahra et al. 2014)

Nevertheless, IE research has managed to grow rapidly, and it has the attention of many renowned researchers. As a result, several issues of the most important Business and Management journals have been devoted to the topic of IE. Some of the published papers have even obtained awards in the most prestigious journals of International Business, Marketing and Entrepreneurship (for example, Chetty and Campbell-Hunt 2004; Knight and Cavusgil 1996; McDougall et al. 1994). Moreover, the IE research community has built a rich academic structure to support and encourage research in the field. For example, in 1998, some of the leading researchers (Etemad, Wright and Johnson) launched the McGill International Entrepreneurship Conference Series, and as a result, 2009 marked the launch of ie-scholars.net, which is a virtual community that was built to encourage and facilitate the sharing of resources, experience and knowledge on a global scale (Ie-scholars.net 2016). Although, the Journal of International Entrepreneurship, which is dedicated to the IE field, was launched in 2003 (Coviello et al. 2011).

Today IE research has become an important field, with an increasingly established position. The field has attracted hundreds of researchers from the most diverse areas of the social sciences, which has led to an increasingly widespread body of literature (McDougall et al. 2014).

Researchers generally emphasize the importance of classifying the literature of a research area based on the main trends in the discipline (Adriaanse and Rensleigh 2013; Bjork et al. 2014). For this purpose, bibliometrics is one of the most commonly used techniques, considered also partial and inclusive (Chabowski et al. 2017). Bibliometrics is a field of methodological study that is based on two relevant approaches (Cobo et al. 2011a). The first one, includes a performance analysis, and uses a wide range of indicators that aim to evaluate the impact of citations made by scientific actors to the scientific production of a given field of study. These actors can be, authors, universities and countries. The second approach includes a graphic mapping of science, and aims to show structural and dynamic aspects of scientific research. Currently, both perspectives of bibliometrics have receive increased attention due to the strong development of computer technology and the internet (Cobo et al. 2015; Merigó et al. 2016), and are frequently studied in a combined way to validate and enrich the results of both. Therefore, the complementarity of both approaches makes it possible to construct an overall picture of a specific research field.

Bibliometric studies are fairly common in a wide range of research fields such as Management (Podsakoff et al. 2008), entrepreneurship (Luor et al. 2014) and innovation (Cancino et al. 2017; Fagerberg et al. 2012). Moreover, other studies have developed new modes of bibliometrics analysis to consider specific topics within a field of research, such as the Theory of Transaction Costs (Ferreira et al. 2014) and Foreign Direct Investment Theory (Fetscherin et al. 2010) on the field of International Business; or the Social Entrepreneurship (Rey-Martí et al. 2016), the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Project (Álvarez et al. 2014), the Family Business (Xi et al. 2015) and Technology Entrepreneurship (Ferreira et al. 2016) on the Entrepreneurship field. Likewise, several bibliometric studies have been published for the celebration of the anniversary of several journals from different areas of knowledge such as Journal of Business Research (Merigó et al. 2015b), Knowledge Based System (Cobo et al. 2015), European Journal of Operational Research (Laengle et al. 2017). Bibliometric studies in the IE field are quite scarce. In fact, the only extant publication is quite general and mainly uses descriptive statistical techniques (Servantie et al. 2016), almost completely ignoring the other techniques and indicators that are normally used in bibliometrics analysis, such as indicators of influence (h-index) and citation analysis. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to complement the work of Servantie et al. (2016) and provide an overview of the IE research based on the main bibliometric approaches. Therefore, an analysis of bibliometric performance and a graphic mapping of the field of study is presented in order to show the most productive and influential studies and the connections between the different scientific actors participating in the IE field. Analyses are performed considering the different levels of information that are found, which include journals, papers, authors, institutions and countries. The references were obtained considering all the documents published between 1989 and 2016 in the journals indexed in Scopus, which is considered one of the most complete databases in the social sciences (Mongeon and Paul-Hus 2016).

The results of the bibliometric performance analysis and the graphic mapping are consistent among them, and indicate that McDougall and Oviatt are the most influential authors in IE research. Other leaders in the field who are also in the top positions among the most cited authors include Zahra, Knight, Jones, and Coviello. The Journal of International Business Studies is the most influential journal, although the Journal of International Entrepreneurship is the most productive in the IE field. Predictably, the USA leads the IE research because it houses the most influential authors and universities in the field of study. However, it is important to mention that from a regional point of view, it is the European countries that lead this field. Finally, although there are some limitations associated with this study, it is important to emphasize that the consistency of the results obtained from both bibliometric approaches allows us to postulate this work as a complementary study and with an important informative value within the IE field.

This paper is organized as follows. The following section describes the methodology to be used. Subsequently, the results of this study are presented through an performance bibliometric analysis and a science mapping. Finally, the last section discusses the main conclusions of this study.

Methodology

This study classifies the publications that are framed in the International Entrepreneurship field through an analysis of bibliographic records that are obtained from the Scopus database. The Web of Science (WoS) has traditionally been the main source of scientific evaluation. However, Scopus has become a good alternative to the WoS because it has been designed for both literature search and citation analysis (Meho and Yang 2007; Vieira and Gomes 2009). In other words, Scopus performs the same tasks as the WoS. The Scopus Content Coverage Guide (https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/scopus/content) shows that its database contains over 60 million records, of which 38 million include references that date back to 1996 and 22 million records from previous references that date from 1823 through 1996. These records have been collected from more than 21,500 scientific journals and more than 5000 international publishers, including more than 4200 open access journals, more than 7.1 million paper presentations, over 360 trade publications and 530 book series that cover all areas of knowledge.

Although the above would be sufficient reason to justify the use of Scopus, we believe that the main reason is the apparent immaturity of the field. IE is a field that emerged in an investigation by McDougall that was published in McDougall 1989. However, although it has shown significant growth in recent years, it is still considered to be an immature field (Jones et al. 2011). This relative immaturity, made us expand the literature search of this field. Mongeon and Paul-Hus (2016) recently noted that Scopus includes most of the journals that are indexed in the WoS, but also has a greater number of exclusive journals compared to the WoS. This was a compelling reason to select Scopus as our main source of bibliometric records. A relevant example in this sense is that working with Scopus allowed us to obtain records of articles that were published in the Journal of International Entrepreneurship, which is a journal that is indexed in Scopus but not in the WoS. We therefore believe that the breadth of the Scopus records allows us to offer a more complete picture of the influence of IE literature in this field of study.

Another important issue that was taken into account in the process of searching for records was the consideration of the multiple definitions of the field of IE. Its progress has been characterized by a continuous development of definitions that have led to changes in the IE domain boundaries (Baier-Fuentes et al. 2018). According to Keupp and Gassmann (2009), the large number of definitions hinders the distinction of investigations that should be considered to be typical IE studies. However, since its inception, the various theoretical developments of IE have generated key concepts that characterize the field. Therefore, these concepts are used as keywords in the literature search process. The search process in Scopus was limited to research that was published between 1989 and 2015 and that utilize the following keywords: “International* Entrepreneur*”, “Entrepreneur* International*”, “Rapid* International* Firm*”, “Earl* International* Firm*”, “International* New* Venture*”, “Born* Global* Firm*”, “Export* Entrepreneur*”, “International* Start-up*”, “International* Corporat* Entrepreneur*”, “International* Intrapreneur*” and “International* Social* Entrepreneur*”. Having obtained the results, the studies were selected from the areas that correspond to Business, Management and Accounting. Finally, only research studies involving articles, reviews, notes and letters were evaluated (Merigó et al. 2016).

Once we had completed the search process, the records were subjected to a bibliometric analysis. Bjork et al. (2014) points out that the usefulness of bibliometric analysis lies in the obtaining of a general overview of a specific research field. Bibliometrics involves the application of different methods to determine the qualitative and quantitative changes in a subject of scientific research, establish the profile of publications on a specific topic and identify structural aspects and trends within a discipline (Rey-Martí et al. 2016). Bibliometric methods involve two main approaches: a performance analysis and a graphic mapping of science or bibliometric maping (Noyons et al. 1999). The performance analysis evaluates the impact of citations of the scientific production made by the different actors that interact in a research field. These actors can be countries, universities, departments and, of course, researchers. The performance analysis developed in this document is applied to journal articles, authors, institutions and countries in order to provide a better representation of the research field. Note that this approach also employs a wide range of indicators. The most popular indicators are those that consider the number of publications and the number of citations (Yu and Shi 2015). The number of publications is correlated with the productivity of the author and that the number of citations is correlated to its influence on the scientific community (Merigó et al. 2016). Similarly, other indicators have recently been used, such as the h-index (Hirsch 2005), which is also known as h-classics (Martínez et al. 2014). This index has gained popularity among authors (Alonso et al. 2009) because it can represent the importance of a specific group of articles. The interpretation of the h-index is simple. For example, if a set of papers has an h-index of 15, then 15 of the papers that are included in the set have received at least 15 citations each. Note also that the value of this indicator can change over time. In recent years, however, several indicators have been used to provide a more representative and informative perspective of the data. This has caused uncertainty regarding which is the optimal indicator to better represent the information (Podsakoff et al. 2008). Therefore, the performance analysis presented in this paper includes the most popular indicators and classifies records according to the number of publications, the number of citations and the h-index. In addition, other indicators are considered, such as the ratio of citations of articles (citations / articles) and the number of articles above a threshold citation (Merigó et al. 2015a, b). The performance analysis also presents other indicators that arise in some cases, from the combination of the previously mentioned indicators such as the number of articles in which the papers produced by the actor are cited (ACIE) or the average citations per article of the actor in the IE research (PCIE), among others. Other indicators included are the citation thresholds (≥100, ≥50, ≥20) and some dimensions of temporality (Q1, Q2, …Qn) that allow observing the publication behavior over time of the different scientific actors. Finally, note that each of the indicators are defined at the end of each table included.

Graphic mapping is an important methodology in the field of biblimetry, since it allows to analyze the intellectual connections within a field of dynamically changing scientific knowledge. This methodology has been perfected in recent years thanks to the development of some software’s that allow analyzing the bibliographic information (Cobo et al. 2011b). Among the most popular softwares we can mention, for example, IN-SPIRE (Wise 1999), CiteSpace II (Chen 2006), Bibexcel (Persson et al. 2009), VOSViewer (van Eck and Waltman 2010), among several others. Note that VOS viewer software is used in this study. VOS viewer, as well as the rest of the mentioned software, use different indicators to extract and represent networks within a field of study. These include co-citation (Small 1973), blibographic coupling (Kessler 1963), co-words or co-ocurrence of keywords (Callon et al. 1983) and co-authorship (Peters and van Raan 1991). Note that the co-citacion analysis studies the cited documents, while the bibliographic coupling analyzes the citing documents. Likewise, the co-ocurrence of keywords analysis studies the keywords of the documents and is used to study the conceptual structure of a research field. The co-authorship measures the degree of collaboration or co-authorship among the most productive sources. Finally, notice that the visualization of the graph is represented by a network of elements, in which the size of the circle varies according to the importance of the element, while the network connections represent how close the link between the elements is. The place of the circles and the colors are used to cluster the items.

Results

Performance bibliometric analysis

This section presents the main results of the performance bibliometric analysis that was applied to records that are associated with IE research and published between 1989 and 2015. The search process was conducted in May 2016 and obtained 1215 publications. Note that these outcomes correspond to the total number of papers that include at least one of the keywords. However, because this paper analyzes only the records that are published in the areas of Business, Management and Accounting, the total number of publications was reduced to 738 papers.

According to Fig. 1, IE research has increased significantly in recent years. Note that most of the papers have been published in the last decade, with 632 papers that are dated between 2006 and 2015, which represents 85.6% of the total volume. This growth can be explained by several factors. First, there has been an increase in the number of international researchers who study the phenomena that are associated with IE (Martínez et al. 2014). Second, there has been an increasing willingness of journals to receive the research that is related to this field. Finally, there has been an emergence of journals that are dedicated to the field, such as the Journal of International Entrepreneurship.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Number of publications per year in International Entrepreneurship research since 1989. Note: The blue bars indicate the total number of publications per year in Scopus. Red bars indicate the number of publications in Scopus indexed in Business, Management and Accounting areas. The green bars indicate the number articles, reviews, notes and letters of the IE field found in Scopus

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One of the ways to highlight the influence of work in a specific research field is through the number of citations. The papers that are related to IE have a fairly low citation rate compared to the fields of International Business or Entrepreneurship. To evaluate the ratio of citations in the IE field, Table 1 presents the general structure of citations of all the primary research that was obtained from Scopus, which are classified according to threshold citations. Also included is the percentage of papers of each section. Note that only three of the papers have received more than 500 citations and only 23% of all of the papers have received at least 25 citations. Finally, note that for the entire collection of papers in the IE field, the h-index is 70. This specifically means that there are at least 70 papers that have received at least 70 citations.

Table 1 General citation structure in International Entrepreneurship research in Scopus
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The most influential journal in IE research

IE studies are published in a wide range of journals. Table 2 shows the ranking of the 40 most productive and influential journals in the field of IE. In addition, some bibliometric indicators are shown, such as the h-index of the IE papers (HIE), the total number of citations that have been received by this group of papers (TCIE), the total number of IE papers (TPIE) and the ratio of IE papers, which is calculated based on the total papers per journal (% PIE). Further, we have included the time evolution of the IE papers that correspond to each of the journals. Finally, note that the journals have been ordered according to their h-index in the IE field (HIE). In the case of a tie, the total number of citations that have been received in the field was taken into account (TCIE).

Table 2 Most influential journal in IE research
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According to Table 2, it is observed that the most influential journal in IE research is the Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS), with a HIE of 25 and a high number of citations. However, the Journal of International Entrepreneurship (JIE) is the most productive journal in the field because it has 78 papers, which represent 48.8% of all of the papers that have been published by the journal. However, the level of IE citations of this journal is low compared to others. Regarding the influence of journals in the IE field, some are highlighted not only for their renowned reputation or their levels of scientific productivity but for the publication of IE papers over a threshold of 100 citations. These include, the International Business Review (IBR), the Journal of Business Venturing (JBV), the Journal of World Business (JWB), the International Marketing Review (IMR), Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice (ETP), the Journal of International Marketing (JIMK), the Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development (JSBED), the Journal of International Management (JIMG) and the Journal of Management (JM).

Another important aspect to consider in this section is the analysis of all the IE citations (TCIE). The JIBS again stands out for having the largest number of TCIE with 3369 citations, followed by the JBV and the IBR, with 2542 and 1772 citations, respectively. Subsequently there is a third group of journals such as the JWB, ETP and the JIMK, which have more than 1000 citations. A fourth group of journals such as the IMR, the JIE and the JM have a citations ranging between 600 and 1000. The remaining journals have a TCIE that is less than 450 citations. This marked difference between the groups of journals could be explained by several factors. The first factor is the evident quality of the journals. Note that most of the journals with a high number of IE citations have a high IF and are also well recognized in their respective fields. A second factor could be the theoretical orientation of the journals. Note for example that all of the journals that are presented in Table 3 with a TCIE indicator that is greater than 900 have a strong orientation of publishing articles that are related to the internationalization of companies or that have featured issues on Entrepreneurship and / or Small Businesses. This is because IE is a field that emerges from the intersection of International Business and Entrepreneurship (McDougall and Oviatt 2000), and therefore several of the studies that have been published in the journals of these fields give theoretical support to the IE field. However, it is interesting to note that, although it has an exclusive orientation to IE research, the JIE has failed to be sufficiently influential within the field. Note further that, although it has a good HIE indicator, it has a low number of citations compared to the other journals. We believe that this is the result of the type of indexing and indicators of journal quality, such as the impact factor (IF). There is currently an intense debate on the indicators that assess journal quality (Raj and Zainab 2012). In this sense, the existing debate on journal quality regarding indexing in both the WoS and Scopus has been inevitable. Because, although currently indicators of quality and coverage of the journal titles are similar between the WoS and Scopus (Sicilia et al. 2011), it is clear that there is a tendency to consider the WoS as the main parameter of quality in the social science research (Norris and Oppenheim 2007). It is therefore likely that the fact that the JIE has not been indexed in the WoS and thus has a low IF relative to other journals (see Table 2) has failed to attract higher quality studies so that it might position itself as a more influential journal in the field. Further, the premature age of the JIE (its release was in 2003) could adversely affect its position.

Table 3 The most cited papers in IE research
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Another important issue to analyze from Table 2 is the progress over time of IE research in the journals. For this, the numbers of papers that were published in these journals are grouped into periods of time, where Q1 represents the previous 2001 period; Q2 refers to the period from 2001 to 2005; Q3 includes the publications from the period from 2006 to 2010 and Q4, the publications from the period from 2011 to 2015. From an overall perspective, the results show that IE research has been progressively published in several journals. In fact, the last ten years have been very productive, and almost all of the journals published at least one document that has been associated with this research field. Regarding the early years of the field, we particularly highlight the JIBS and the JVB as the pioneer journals in this field (Autio 2005). For example, the JBV published an article by McDougall, in which he compared the new national firms that had decided to become international since inception (McDougall 1989). It is noteworthy that in this paper, McDougall proposed the first definition of the IE field. Thus, although it has published less than other journals, the JVB has not been skeptical toward the initial novelty of the field, and it has maintained a similar level of publication until recent years (Q4). However, the JIBS is another relevant journal because in 1994 it published one of the papers that has been considered to be the main driver of IE (See, Oviatt and McDougall 1994). Further, the second period (Q2) maintained a similar level of publication. However, the journals that have made the most progress in IE research are the JIE and the IBR. They currently occupy first and second place among the most productive journals. However, the IBR obtains better indicators regarding the number of citations that it receives.

An important aspect to consider is that despite the apparent growth of IE research, fifteen journals are observed that have been irregular and have decreased their level of publications in the field. Some explanations for this could be by the number of volumes that are published per year and the number of papers that are included in each volume. Similarly, the thematic interests of journals are an important barrier to explaining the irregularity of a specific issue in academic journals. However, the publications that are presented in this list have a strong orientation towards the International Business and Entrepreneurship areas, which are in a stage of maturity rather more advanced compared to the IE field. Thus, this could also be an explanation for the skepticism and irregularity of some of the journals towards IE investigations.

The most influential articles in IE research

One way to obtain a complete picture of the documents that are published in a field is through the analysis of the number of citations that are received (Merigó and Yang 2017). The number of citations reflects the popularity and influence of each article in the scientific community. Table 3 presents the 50 most cited articles in the field of IE.

It is important to note that some of the most influential papers in the IE field do not immediately appear with the keywords that we have used. Researchers that study bibliometric science refer to them as “stray citations,” and they usually appear in all of the bibliographic databases (including WoS), particularly in the areas that belong to the Social Sciences (Harzing and Alakangas 2016). However, Scopus addresses these citations by an additional tab through which it is possible to examine these data in a limited way (Jacsó 2008). Therefore, this feature has allowed us to develop a manual search process to find some of the most relevant references between these documents. Table 3 presents "Other highly influential research papers in IE," so that in total 60 titles are presented that correspond to the most cited papers in the EI research. Note that the most cited and influential paper is Oviatt and McDougall (1994), which has more than 1300 citations. Although some of the previous studies up to 1994 referred to IE as a new field of research (for example, McDougall 1989; Morrow 1988), the Oviatt and McDougall (1994) study is considered by many as the starting point of the IE field (Autio 2005; Keupp and Gassmann 2009). Importantly, McDougall and Oviatt are the authors who dominate this list, with eight papers together, four of which are in the Top 10. One other couple of influential authors is Knight and Cavusgil, who together have two studies that are within the Top 10 of our list. Note that this list includes any type of publication and not only academic articles because the focus is on the number of citations.

The most productive and influential authors

Keupp and Gassmann (2009) note that the IE field started from the phenomenological research, which mainly focused on the study of rapidly internationalizing firms, which are popularly known as International New Ventures (INVs) or Born Global Firms (BGs) (McDougall et al. 2014). McDougall (1989) was one of the first researchers to provide empirical evidence for the activities of these firms. Since then, McDougall and Oviatt have jointly developed several contributions, mainly theoretical, which have sought to open new avenues of research and theoretically strengthen the IE field (Autio 2005). However, since its inception many other authors have made significant contributions. To obtain a broader view of IE research, the authors of greater presence and influence, as well as the time evolution of its publications in the field, are determined. Therefore, Table 4 presents the 40 most important authors in the research IE community. Note that the authors are decreasingly ordered according to their productivity in the field (TPIE). In the case of a tie we have taken into consideration the total number of citations in the field (TCIE).

Table 4 The most productive and influential authors in ie research
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In general terms, we note that McDougall is the most influential and productive author in IE research because she has the best bibliometric indicators that are related to the field (TPIE = 17, TCIE = 2381 and HIE = 13). Similarly, Oviatt is the second most influential author, with a HIE = 9 and more than 2000 citations, and he is also found in the top of the most productive authors in the field.

In relation to the number of documents by an author, it can be observed that there are no major differences between the first 10 authors. However, Andersson with 14 studios, is the one who obtains the second position after McDougall. Dimitratos obtains third place with 12 papers; Saarenketo and Oviatt are in fourth and fifth place with 11 papers each. By reviewing the citations record by authors, McDougall and Oviatt lead the list with citations, 2381 and 2059, respectively. Other authors with a high level of citations in the field are Knight (1287 citations), Zahra (1262 citations), Jones (1164 citations) and Coviello (1101 citations). It is notable that this listing may lack important references. This usually occurs with the use of the various bibliometric databases (Harzing and Alakangas 2016). However, to complement these citations and therefore provide a more comprehensive view, we have included a column that analyzes the total citations that have been received by each author (TC). Because most of these authors are strongly oriented to IE research, the information that is contained in this column can be considered to be an indicator of the influence of these authors in this field. By observing this column, we are surprised by the total citations that have been received by Zahra (12,228 citations) compared with other authors. Zahra is an important researcher who has worked in different disciplines of social sciences, particularly in the field of Entrepreneurship. The research that has been provided by Zahra has been diverse, ranging mainly in the three areas of Management and Strategy literatures – Entrepreneurship, International Entrepreneurship and Social Entrepreneurship (Audretsch 2015). Other authors with a high level of citation are Cavusgil and Sapienza, who, like Zahra, have made contributions in other fields of research. The remaining authors primarily focus on issues of IE.

Regarding the time evolution of publications by an author, several appear in the first period, among which we emphasize McDougall and Oviatt. Note that these authors are those who started the field and can therefore be considered the “Fathers of the International Entrepreneurship”. However, other authors who have made significant contributions, such as Zahra, Jones, Crick and Sapienza, have emerged. Of these, it is Zahra in particular who, through his contributions has brought profound changes to the IE domain (McDougall et al. 2014). In the second period (Q2), there appear several equally important authors, such as Coviello, Knight and Madsen. It should be noted, however, that in the same period, McDougall and Oviatt remain the most productive authors. Periods 3 and 4 (Q3 and Q4), clearly show the emergence of all of the 40 most productive authors in the IE field.

Another interesting aspect to observe is the influence of the researchers through their publications in the nucleus of the IE community. Therefore, Table 5 presents a classification of documents that were published by the top 40 authors in the ten major journals in the field of IE. Note that the presented journals are ordered from left to right according to their level of influence in the field (HIE). Similarly, the authors are ordered decreasingly according to their level of citations in the field (TCIE).

Table 5 Total papers classified by most influential journals IE
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According to Table 5, the author who has more publications in these journals is McDougall, with 12 papers. The second place is for Coviello with 8 papers. Oviatt and Jones continue with 7 papers. McDougall is also notable for publishing more at the JIBS (4 items). In the same journal, followed Coviello with three papers, and subsequently Oviatt, Knight, Zahra and Cavusgil with 2 papers. Interestingly, the authors generally tend to publish their articles in three journals: the IBR, the JIE and the JWB. However, the five most cited authors in the field generally published either in the JIBS, the JBV or ETP. These journals are of great importance in the fields of International Business and Entrepreneurship. They also have high rates of IF after the JM. An example of the above is that, of the 12 papers that are published by McDougall in TP10IE, four of them are published in the JIBBS, three articles in the JBV and three more in ETP. Similarly, of the 8 papers that are published by Oviatt, two of them are published in the JIBS, three articles in the JBV and two in ETP. Knight, Zahra and Jones are similar cases.

The most productive and influential institutions

The phenomena that are associated with the International Entrepreneurship field, such as the rapid internationalization of firms, has drawn attention in various institutional sectors, including numerous universities around the world. These institutions are primarily responsible for the development of the various research fields in all of the knowledge areas. Table 6 presents the 40 most productive and influential universities in IE research. Furthermore, an additional list is included with other universities of lower productivity, but that also are influential in the IE field. To obtain a complete overview of the research that is conducted at these institutions, some indicators are considered such as the HIE, the total volume of IE publications (TPIE) and the number of citations (TCIE); however, we have also included other indicators such as ratio citations/studios (PCIE) as well as a classification by several thresholds concerning the number of citations (100, 50 and 20 citations). Table 6 also presents the current global ranking of these institutions according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) and the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings. The aim of the last two indicators is to determine the world ranking of the leading universities in the IE field.

Table 6 The most productive and influential institution according to Scopus 2015
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According to the above, Georgia State University is the most influential institution in IE, with a HIE = 13 and high productivity. It is also noteworthy that this institution has 7 studies within the 50 most cited papers of the field, which is presented in Table 3. One of the reasons why Georgia State University obtains good indicators in this field is due to the authorship of leading researchers in the field, such as McDougall, Oviatt, Zahra and Coviello. However, Indiana University and the University of Glasgow occupy the second and third place, respectively, both with HIE = 12. In this case, the tiebreaker was performed according to the TCIE indicator. Next are the University of Strathclyde and Aalto University with the fourth and fifth place, respectively, and as in the previous cases, the tiebreaker in HIE was performed using the TCIE indicator. The other universities are similarly ordered. Regarding scientific productivity in the field, the University of Glasgow is the most productive with 21 published studies, followed closely by the University of Southern Denmark with 19 papers. In the third and fourth place are Indiana University and Lappeenranta University of Technology, both with 18 papers. It is notable that only five American institutions appear on this list, which is surprising compared to other disciplines where the USA can obtain almost all of the top 50 positions (Merigó et al. 2015a). The European universities are very well positioned in this field, with 24 institutions in the top 40 (60%). In this sense, Finland is the European country with most universities on the list (5 universities), followed by UK with 4 universities, and so on. However, Australia attracts attention as the country with most universities in the top 40 (6 universities). In general, in the analysis of the origin of universities, it can be observed that many universities come from Nordic countries. Countries such as Sweden, Finland and Denmark are characterized by a small domestic market. This coincides with what some authors have noted regarding some of the phenomena that are associated with this field, such as the rapid internationalization of firms, because they occur frequently in countries with these characteristics (Cavusgil and Knight 2009). However, it is important to emphasize that the major universities in IE research come from specific geographical areas, such as North America (the USA and Canada), Europe and Oceania. Therefore, from this perspective, although research has been conducted at several universities around the world, we should note that the most influential studies of IE come from a particular geographically grouped set of universities. Finally, with regard to the quality indicators of universities (ARWU and QS), we should note that only five of these universities appear in the top 100 of the world university rankings, of which none are in the top 50. Approximately ten universities are usually not in the top 500. From this perspective, IE research is quite diverse and has influences other than the world leading universities.

Other interesting issues are the temporal evolution of the publications that are produced by institutions and the productivity of these in the nucleus of IE research. This will provide a specific picture of the progress of each institution in IE research and their participation in the fifteen most influential journals in this field. Moreover, this will prevent the examination of long records of citations and publications in less relevant journals. The results are shown in Table 7. Note that universities are ordered according to their influence in the field (HIE). In case of a tie the total number of citations in the field (TCIE) are considered, and then the number of papers (TPIE). These indicators appear shaded because those that are shown in the above table are used for reference only.

Table 7 The most productive and influential institution according to Scopus 2015
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To perform a temporal analysis of publications by institution, the amount of papers from each university have been classified in four successive periods of time as was done in Tables 2 and 4. Thus, the results show a growing interest of institutions in the IE field. Several of these universities are pioneers in IE research, such as Georgia State University, Indiana University, the University of Strathclyde and Monash University. Note that the most regular universities in time are the most influential in the field. This makes sense because the main documents that began the IE field emerged from this institution through McDougall. Coupled with the regularity of publications, this has enabled it to be the most recognized and influential institution in the IE field. Similarly, Indiana University has been equally important not only for its participation in the beginning of IE research but because it has maintained an increasing trend in the number of contributions. A special mention is deserved by the Georgia Institute of Technology, which, although it has not been the most productive institution, it stands out as one of the pioneers in the development of the field. In the second period (Q2), other universities begin to publish relevant papers and complete the TOP 10 of the most influential institutions in IE research. Among them are the University of Glasgow and the University of Southern Denmark, which are currently the most productive universities in this field of research. In the last period (Q4), other institutions arise, between which are included Halmstad University, the National University of Ireland Galway and Lappeenranta University of Technology due to high scientific productivity in this period.

With regard to the productivity of these universities in the nucleus of IE research, it is observed in general terms that approximately 60% of the papers that have been produced in these institutions have been published in this journal group. Although the data in the table do not reflect it, these universities tend to publish in the JIE and the IBR with 45 and 41 papers, respectively. In terms of universities, Georgia State University again stands as the most influential institution in accordance with the considered criteria, despite not having all of its papers published in these journals. However, the University of Glasgow has 17 studies that have been published in the top 15 of the most influential journals. However, its HIE15 indicator is still lower compared to Georgia State University. The third place is occupied by Indiana University, which has published 18 papers, of which 11 may be published in these journals. The rest continue as is shown in Table 7.

Analysis by country

Because research is one of the most essential elements that determine the advancement of knowledge and economic growth, countries are getting involved and increasingly investing in these activities (Becker 2015; Wang 2010). The aim of this section is to analyze IE research according to geographical distribution. This section emphasizes the importance of the emergence of researchers who move from one country to another (Merigó et al. 2015b). Therefore, an author may have two or more publications in different countries. In this regard, the analysis by country refers to the country in which the author was working at the time of publication. We have used similar indicators for the analysis by university, but it also considers the total population of the countries to monitor productivity per million inhabitants. The results are shown in Table 8. Note that the 40 countries are ordered according to their HIE. As in the previous tables, the tiebreaker total citation in the field (TCIE) is taken into account, following the productivity of the countries (TPIE). Note that the 40 countries are ordered according to their HIE. As in the previous tables, the tiebreaker will be held through the total number of citations in the field (TCIE), followed by the productivity of the countries (TPIE).

Table 8 The most influential countries in IE research
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According to the above table, we clearly show that the USA is the most influential and productive country with HIE = 46 and 170 papers that have been published. This is reasonable considering the size of the USA. It is noteworthy that this country includes the universities and authors who began IE research. In addition, it has received more than twice the citations compared to the second country, and it has published more than half of the most cited papers. In second place is the United Kingdom, with its bibliometric indicators well below those of the USA. However, these indicators are considerably higher compared to the remaining countries. According to HIE, the third and fourth positions are Australia and Finland, respectively. Many European countries appear on this list. In fact, ten of these countries dominate the top fifteen positions. Note also that only one Asian country, China, appears in the top 15. However, it is important to highlight the poor productivity in Latin American countries. In fact, there are only three South American countries (Brazil, Chile and Colombia) in this classification and one Central American country (Costa Rica). This is similar to the case of African countries, of which only South Africa appears.

On the other hand, the most productive country by person is Liechtenstein, although this result is less significant given the small size of the country. In this sense, Finland, Sweden, New Zealand and Denmark are the countries that receive the most notable results. With regard to citations per person, ruling Liechtenstein out of this analysis, Finland and New Zealand again obtain the most outstanding results, although Australia, Sweden, Denmark and Ireland obtain remarkable records. Finally, the thresholds citation shows that the USA has published most of the main articles in the IE field.

As in the analysis of universities, we analyze the temporal evolution of IE publications for each country and their productivity in the nucleus of IE research. The results are shown in Table 9. As in the previous tables, this list is ordered according to the country’s influence in the field (HIE), and the tiebreakers are conducted through TCIE and TPIE indicators.

Table 9 The most influential countries in IE research
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According to the time evolution of publications by country, an increasing trend of IE research is clearly observed in most countries, with the exception of Australia and Belgium, which are the only countries that have reduced their productivity in recent years. However, the growing trend of productivity at a general level agrees with McDougall et al. (2014) when they state that countries are showing a growing interest in the phenomena that are associated with IE. However, Table 9 shows that several countries have studied IE almost from the start. As expected, countries such as the USA and the UK stand out as the countries that started the field of research, and they have maintained a growing trend in productivity in the field. However, many of the most influential countries that appear in the period Q2 mainly come from Europe, North America and Oceania. The rest of the countries appear in the last decade. It is notable that in the recent periods, there has been marked growth in IE research in Asian countries. For example, China, from a single publication in Q3, published 23 articles in the period Q4. Overall, it is noteworthy that in the last five years, many countries around the world have expanded in the field. In addition, given the economic importance that is associated with the phenomena of IE, expectations of higher growth of the research will continue in the future, mainly in the emerging countries.

Regarding the publication of the countries at the nucleus of IE research, the USA appears to be the most productive and influential country in these journals. In fact, more than half of the papers in this country (57.6%) are published in these journals. Similarly, the vast majority of their citations come from USA publications in this group of journals. In second place again is the United Kingdom with more than 64% of articles published in these journals. The citations that are received by papers from this country in this group of journals represent more than 82% of the total of citations of their papers. Canada and Finland are the third and fourth places, respectively; however, the number of citations that were received by Canadian papers in these journals is significantly higher than those of Finland. With regard to the amount of papers that cite papers that have been published in these journals (ACIE15), it should be noted that there is a strong tendency to cite works that have been produced both in the USA and the United Kingdom. This is reasonable because these countries are home to the main authors of this field.

Bibliometric mapping of the IE field

The previous section provides a bibliometric performance analysis of the IE field. However, in order to complement these results, it is interesting to graphically map the bibliographic material from a general point of view. This will allow identifying the main documents, as well as presenting and analyzing the most representative connections between the elements that make up this interesting field of study. Note that this analysis is developed taking into account some indicators such as co-citation, bibliographic coupling and co-occurrence of keywords.

To start the graphic mapping, the co-citation of the bibliographic references of the IE field is analyzed. Note that the co-citation studies the cited documents and occurs when two documents receive a citation from a third document that has been published. Table 10 presents the co-citation of the most cited references in the IE field.

Table 10 Most cited documents among papers published on IE field
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The most cited document in the field of IE is that of Oviatt and McDougall (1994). According to Keupp and Gassmann (2009), this article is considered the starting point of this field of study and therefore, it is reasonable that they obtain this position. Note also that this result is also consistent with that obtained in Table 3. In the second place continues the work of Johanson and Vahlne (1977) and later, the document by Oviatt and McDougall (2005). This last work is important because it provides one of the most cited IE definitions in the field (Baier-Fuentes et al. 2018). Finally, keep in mind that Oviatt and McDougall are the authors with the most documents in the Table.

Another interesting topic to analyze is the co-citation structure of journals in the IE field. This allows analyzing those journals that have received a greater number of citations in the IE field. Figure 2 presents the results with a threshold of twenty citations and one hundred links, and shows how journals are connected within this field.

Fig. 2
figure 2

Co-citation of journal cited in IE field

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Note that Fig. 2 confirms the clustering of the journals according to their orientation focused mainly on the fields of International Business, Entrepreneurship and Management. Of all, Journal of International Business Studies is the leading journal in the IE field with the largest number of citations received and, consequently, with a wider network of connections. This makes sense given that several of the most cited articles in this field have been published in JIBS. Also note that there are other highly cited and well-connected journals, such as Journal of Busines Venturing, Strategic Management Journal, International Business Review, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, among others.

The co-citation of authors is also analyzed, that is, the authors who have received the highest number of citations in the IE field. In addition, through Fig. 3, we will analyze how your profile is connected to other authors. Figure 3 presents the main authors co-cited in the IE field.

Fig. 3
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Co-citation of authors cited in IE field

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As mentioned above, Fig. 3 corroborates the important role of Oviatt and McDougall in the field of research. Remember that these are the most influential and productive authors in the field, and are considered the parents of IE (Baier-Fuentes et al. 2018). However, it is possible to observe other important researchers, such as Johanson and Vahlne (1977), who developed the traditional model of the internationalization process. Note that the inability of this model to explain entrepreneurial internationalization has produced an important debate in the IE field, and as a result is a frequently cited document in the field. Also note that there are other authors strongly connected in the field such as Coviello, Jones, Knight, Zahra, among others.

IE is a research field that has grown rapidly in recent decades and evidence of the phenomena associated with IE come from many countries in the world. However, the literature of this field tends to be concentrated in a small group of countries. Figure 4 shows the most productive countries of the IE, using a bibliographic coupling analysis with a threshold of five documents and one hundred links.

Fig. 4
figure 4

Bibliographic coupling of countries that publish in IE field

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The results are consistent with those observed in Table 8. It is clear that the USA together with the United Kingdom lead the IE field extensively. Note that these countries are positioned in the center of the Figure and are strongly connected to the rest of the countries. It is also possible to observe a strong presence of European countries, which have a strong connection between them. Although they are expected to have a greater presence, the emerging countries still do not appear well represented in the Figure.

Finally, a co-occurrence analysis of keywords of IE field is developed. From this analysis, it is possible to identify the most used topics in the field. Figure 5 presents the main keywords of the IE field considering a threshold of five occurrences and one hundred more frequent co-occurrences.

Fig. 5
figure 5

Co-occurrence of authors keywords of documents published in the IE field

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The main keyword used in this field is International Entrepreneurship. This keyword represents a field of research that involves three research streams (For more information see, Jones et al. 2011), and logically, the authors tend to identify their research with the field of study that represents these currents, namely IE. Obviously, Internationalization and Entrepreneurship are keywords that appear in the center of the figure, since IE field arises from the intersection of these areas of knowledge (McDougall and Oviatt 2000). Remember also that IE studies internationalization from the perspective of entrepreneurship. In addition, it is possible to observe other keywords that are relevant in the IE field, such as International New Ventures and Born Global. These keywords represent to new companies that are rapidly internationalized and have a central role in the field since, from the beginning, research IE has tended to focus especially on this type of companies (Baier-Fuentes et al. 2018; Keupp and Gassmann 2009). Finally, other keywords that appear strongly connected to the mentioned keywords, represent the different theoretical frameworks that are normally used in the IE literature to explain the phenomena associated with this interesting field of research.

Conclusions

A comprehensive bibliometric view of the International Entrepreneurship field has been presented. The analysis was carried out using two bibliometric approaches, which involves a bibliometric performance analysis and a graphic mapping of the IE field, through which it is possible to understand how literature has developed in this field of research. Taking into account the graphic mapping and some indicators such as the index h, the total number of citations and productivity, IE research is analyzed from different points of view based on journals, articles, authors, institutions and countries.

From an overall perspective, the results show that IE research has had a significant increase in recent years. The papers provide evidence from various parts of the world. However, both bibliometric performance analysis and graphic mapping allow to observe that the vast majority of the research of IE field is concentrated in only a small group of countries of which the USA is the absolute leader with the best indicators of influence and productivity. This result was expected for two reasons, first, because the USA generally dominates scientific research in other areas, and second because this country contains both the universities and the authors who are pioneers in the IE field. However, we have found that the United Kingdom is another important country in the field, and it mainly stands out for its good indicators of productivity. Other countries that also stand out in the results of this study are Finland, Sweden and Denmark in northern Europe, as well as Australia and New Zealand in Oceania. Asian countries in recent years appear more strongly than the Latin American countries, but they are still far from the top positions. However, expectations are that these countries will expand research in all areas of science, including the IE field. Nevertheless, it is expected that these countries will expand research in all areas of science, including the IE field.

The findings on the institutions are similar to the analyses by country because the USA and the United Kingdom contain the most influential universities in this field. It is noteworthy that Georgia State University and Indiana University - both of which are American institutions - have hosted the leading researchers in the IE field (for example, Oviatt, McDougall, Zahra, Cavusgil), which has enabled them to position themselves as the most influential institutions in this field. Among the institutions in the United Kingdom, the University of Glasgow is particularly highlighted as the institution of higher productivity in the IE field.

At the regional level, it is important to emphasize that the European institutions have provided a significant amount of attention to the IE field. In fact, twenty-four European universities are among the 40 most influential universities, among which they stand out as having a good representation, along with universities of Nordic countries. With regard to the institutions by continents, the American and Oceanic universities appear at a relatively lower level. Further, note that although studies of Asian and Latin American universities have appeared in recent years, none of these institutions appear among the most productive and influential. It should be noted, therefore, that at the regional level, Europe is the great dominator in IE research. In addition, this is consistent with the graphic mapping presented in this study, which shows a strong connection between European countries.

Another interesting question to consider is that a vast majority of the most influential institutions do not appear in the top 100 of the general classification of universities that are available to the public, except for Utrecht University, Uppsala University, the University of Groningen, the University of Queensland and Monash University, all of which are in the top 100 (See the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) and the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings, as is shown in Table 6). Even if we focus on the more specialized classifications in the fields of Economics and Business, we find similar results, with only Indiana University appearing in the top 30, and, at a lower level, the University of New South Wales and University of Groningen in the top 100. Therefore, it is clear that among the top ranked universities, there is a fairly significant skepticism towards IE research.

Focusing on researchers, both performance analysis and graphic mapping find that the main exponents in this research field are Benjamin Oviatt and Patricia McDougall. Their paper, which was published in 1994, entitled "Toward a Theory of International New Ventures," was named the paper of the decade in the JIBS. This paper is relevant because some authors (Autio 2005; Keupp and Gassmann 2009) consider that this was the paper that laid the groundwork for the development of the IE field. Nevertheless, our analysis enables us to identify McDougall as the most influential and productive researcher. However, there are other researchers who have made significant contributions to this field. Among them we found, for example, Knight, Zahra Jones, Servais and Coviello, who are well positioned in the most influential journals in the field. Predictably, most of the most influential and productive researchers are Americans and Europeans.

Given the origin of the IE field (McDougall and Oviatt 2000), it was expected that the journals with higher productivity and influence in IE would have a clear focus on the fields of International Business and Entrepreneurship. The results of the bibliometric performance analysis indicate that the Journal of International Business Studies is the most influential journal. This is also corroborated by the graphic mapping of the field. This makes sense because, as discussed above, this journal is oriented towards internationalization issues (Cantwell et al. 2014), and it also published the main document that drove the development of IE research (Oviatt and McDougall 1994). Moreover, because JIBS is a recognized top level journal that publishes the greatest exponents of the IE field. Another equally important journal within the IE field is IBR. This journal is more productive than JIBS and has a similar level of influence. It is also worth mentioning JIE, which shows a good level of influence and is also the most productive magazine in the field. In the particular case of JIE, we believe that its early age, its divulging character and its absence in other databases in which it could be indexed at a recognized level (for example the Web of Science), are factors that have adversely affected its attraction of the most renowned authors, which could - hypothetically - improve its position of influence. Other journals to highlight are the Journal of Business Venturing (JBV), Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice (ETP), International Business Review (IBR) and the Journal of World Business (JWB), which obtain excellent indicators in this field.

Finally, we mention some of the limitations that must be considered. First, the information that is presented in this study is meant to be of a complementary and informative nature, and it is only intended to provide general guidance of the most productive and influential research in the field. However, we have conducted our analysis by considering only the number of publications (articles, reviews, letters and notes) and citations. This could involve the exclusion of other papers and records that may be equally influential in this field. Moreover, we performed this analysis based on information that was obtained from Scopus. One of the strengths of this database is its comprehensive coverage on research from the social sciences (Mongeon and Paul-Hus 2016). However, a significant amount of information may have been excluded through the occurrence of “stray citations,” which is endemic to all bibliometric databases (Jacsó 2008). However, according to our common knowledge of the IE field, we are certain that the information that was retrieved from Scopus provided us with a comprehensive set of the most relevant research that IE has produced to date. It is also important to note that the information that is provided in this study may change over time depending on the thematic trends that are considered by IE investigators.