Strategic planning research through fifty years of long range planning: a bibliometric overview

Abstract

Long Range Planning (LRP) is the first journal focused on strategic planning. It was created in 1968 by the Long Range Planning Society, and it celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2018. This event led to the presentation of a complete bibliometric study aimed at identifying the most significant results that occurred in the journal during this period. For this purpose, bibliometric data were collected from the Web of Science Core Collection database, and two bibliometric approaches were used to analyze the journal's publications: a performance analysis and a graphical mapping of the literature. The first of these uses a wide range of productivity and influence indicators that include the number of publications and citations, the h-index, and citations by paper, among others. The second approach uses the VOSviewer software to deliver a graphical view of the various intellectual connections within LRP. The results of both bibliometric approaches are consistent and confirm LRP as a leading journal in strategic planning and management, with increasing participation of authors and universities from countries around the world.