The Current Intellectual Property Debate: A Citation-Based Analysis

This paper addresses the research landscape of Intellectual Property Rights. It describes and probes the key players and the most influential journal publications. While most literature reviews are qualitative, in many cases highly subjective and necessarily selective, this paper takes another course. By using Social Network Analysis and the Co-Author Citation Approach it constructs a quantitative approach. The outcome is threefold. First, the works with the most influence are identified, as are 9 sub-networks into which the Intellectual Property research splits. Second, the research institutions and their networks are analyzed. This research illustrates that the Intellectual Property research landscape is shaped by a handful of universities, the rest follow suit. Third, it is demonstrated that North America dominates the academic Intellectual Property debate by far. Regions such as South America and Africa do not even appear in the body of knowledge. This paper gives an overview of Intellectual Property research. Based on the quantitative output further research questions can be formulated.