Mapping Global Research on International Financial Reporting Standards: A Scientometric Review

Abstract

For the purpose to provide scholars with a more quantifiable and visualized snapshot of the realm of IFRS research (lingua franca in global business today) we conducted a scientometric review of 973 articles related to the issue published during the period from 2009 to 2020 and indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection. The findings show that the number of related articles has been increasing year by year. The global research on IFRS has been produced chiefly in the USA, England, Australia, China and Germany which not only generated majority of the high-yielding research institutions as well as productive authors but also countries of origins most of the prolific journals. Among the innumerable subject matters debated in these selected papers key are earnings management, information disclosure quality, accounting standards, the impact of IFRS, value relevance, and IFRS adoption. Since 2009, IFRS research bursts can be divided into three stages: 1) the period from 2009 to 2011 - mainly focused on the discussion of the concepts of IAS and IFRS; 2) the period from 2012 to 2014 turned to the theoretical level, and 3) from 2016 to 2020 when the research focused on the practical level. This scientometric review would complement and enrich existing literature by incorporating a quantitative perspective into it.