Trend on public administration research: Bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Public administration has become the main force for society as well as the government. Given the relevance and urgency of public administration research, this research aims to present publications on public administration research from the Scopus database using bibliometric analysis. The method of this research is qualitative methods using Publish or Perish by Harzing for citations in the form of metrics, Microsoft Excel for frequency analysis, and VOS viewer for data visualization with period time 2010–2021. Based on the research results, the publications on public administration research have been consistently increasing since 2015 with 656 citations. The most popular keywords identified in the document set are development, drug administration, food and practice, China, impact, public administration review and state, application, public administration research, big data, future, case, evolution, and efficiency. The relevance of public administration research probably lies in striking the right balance between application and theory development. On the one hand, public administration research should expose researchers to real-life managerial challenges and give them the necessary tools to implement policy successfully. On the other hand, it should also expose public administration researchers to critical thinking and empower them to engage in governance and societal challenges, propose theoretical solutions and build new theories.