This study used bibliometric methods to obtain qualitative results on Islamic financial literature. This research used bibliometric analysis techniques to explore all publications indexed in the Scopus database on Islamic social finance from 1988 to 2023. Bibliometric analysis in collaboration with content analysis is becoming increasingly popular among scholars (Apriantoro et al., 2022). To ensure reliability and review validity, descriptive, integrative, systematic, or meta-analytic reviews are combined with bibliometric reviews to provide qualitative aspects of the literature (Morriello, 2023). However, bibliometric analysis has the advantage of new methods with rare applications of Islamic finance (Zhang et al., 2023). This method can be distinguished from other comparable verification techniques at the level of insight and the necessary disclosure of the phenomenon object of interest (Supriani et al., 2022).

Three bibliometric analysis tools: VOSviewers, Excel, and RStudio, are often used to create bibliographic information(Filho et al., 2023). VOSviewer is used for website and content analysis. With VOSviewer, users can create and visualize bibliometric networks (Sofyantoro et al., 2023). Excel is commonly used in bibliometric studies to organize and clean bibliographic data, perform basic statistical analysis, and create visualizations of publication trends and collaborations. RStudio, on the other hand, is preferred for more advanced statistical modeling, network analysis, and text mining tasks in bibliometric research, allowing researchers to uncover complex patterns and relationships within bibliographic data. Often referred to as maps, these visualizations are used to perform various network analyses such as co-authors, co-occurrences, and co-citations. This network of relationships can be built for authors, sources, countries, and keywords. VOSviewer also incorporates bibliographies(Filho et al., 2023).

This study consists of three main sections. The first section involves conducting an overall performance analysis. This section collects public information about the dataset, and the growth trends over the years are analyzed. Critical aspects of the literature, such as the principal authors and their country of origin and affiliation, are discussed.

The second section involves conducting a citation analysis. This includes identifying the most frequently cited documents, references, and sources, as well as the sources and influences of the authors.

The third section involves web and content analytics using aggregated bibliographies, shared citations, and event analysis. This section aims to provide a deeper understanding of the research landscape by analyzing the dataset's publication patterns, collaboration, and influence. By conducting these three analyses, this study aims to evaluate the research on the topic of interest comprehensively. The whole procedure can be seen in Figure 1.

The data in Figure 3 shows the number of publications for ten different authors. Widyastuti, U. has the highest number of publications, with four, while the other nine authors each have two publications.

Figure 4 shows the number of publications affiliated with different universities or institutions. Universiti Teknologi MARA and Universiti Malaya have the highest number of publications, each with seven. Four universities have four publications, while six other institutions have two or three publications each. The number of publications is a valuable metric for measuring the productivity of universities and institutions.

The data in Figure 5 shows the number of publications by country, with Indonesia having the highest number of publications at 32, followed by Malaysia with 25. Four other countries have between 2 two and four publications each.

We can analyze the regional trends within Asia, as most of the countries in this dataset are located there. From the data provided, we can see that Indonesia and Malaysia have the highest number of publications in this group, followed by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. This suggests that these countries have relatively strong research capabilities and investments in research and development.

It is also worth noting that the United Arab Emirates, a country in the Middle East, has three publications in this dataset, which could suggest a growing interest in research and development in that region.

The provided data in Table 2 shows the Bradford Law ranking of the top 10 journals in Islamic and Middle Eastern finance, business research, marketing, economics, and related areas. Bradford's law states that journals on a specific subject can be divided into three zones, each containing a certain number of articles. The first zone includes core journals that publish the most articles on a topic. The second zone contains journals that publish fewer articles, and the third zone includes journals that publish only a few articles on the topic.

In this dataset, the first zone contains the top 4 journals, which have published 6, 4, 4, and 4 articles, respectively. The second zone includes journals that have published two articles each, and the third zone includes journals that have published only 1 article each.

This analysis shows that a few core journals in the field of Islamic and Middle Eastern finance and related areas publish most of the articles. Therefore, these journals will likely be the most prestigious and influential field. Meanwhile, most journals publish only a few articles on the subject, indicating that there are only a few niche areas or subfields within this larger field.

Analysis of citations shows the relationship between the two documents. However, this analysis has been criticized for negatively influencing article quality evaluations of citations (incorrect citation results), self-citations, and ignoring the time frame given for citations (Barkaoui et al., 2024).

Table 3 shows the top 10 most globally cited documents per year, with information on the author, total citations, TC per year, and normalized TC. The normalized TC is calculated by dividing the TC per year by the average TC per year for the field.

The data analysis shows that Mahdzan Ns has two papers in the top 10 list, with the 2017 paper having the highest total citations and normalized TC. Albaity M and Haider Mr are also among the highly cited authors. The TC per year ranges from 1.15 to 6.00, with Albaity M having the highest TC per year. The normalized TC ranges from 0.97 to 4.29, with Albaity M having the highest normalized TC.

Overall, the data suggest that these authors and their papers have made significant contributions to their respective fields, as evidenced by their high citation counts. However, it also highlights the importance of considering both the TC per year and the normalized TC when assessing the impact of scholarly work.

The H-index is a metric representing the number of papers an author has published that have been cited at least h times. Similarly, the G-index is calculated based on the total number of citations the top G articles receive. The M-index is a variation of the H-index that considers the number of years an author has been active. It is obtained by dividing the H-index by the number of years of activity. In addition, the total citation (Tc), number of papers (Np), and year of publication start (Py_Start) are other factors that can be used to evaluate an author's research output.

The data in Table 4 suggest that the International Journal of Islamic And Middle Eastern Finance And Management is the most influential source among the listed journals. At the same time, the Journal of Islamic Marketing and the Journal of Islamic Accounting And Business Research are also highly respected sources in their respective fields. In addition, the Isra International Journal of Islamic Finance has a high early citation impact, indicating that its articles are highly cited soon after publication. However, more contextual information, such as each journal's subject area and scope, is needed to draw more definitive conclusions about their relative impact within their fields.

Our analysis focused on individual documents, and we utilized fractional analysis as our method for bibliographic coupling analysis. Instead of complete counting, we opted for fractional counting to provide a more detailed level of assessment that minimizes the impact of documents with many authors. In addition, this approach allowed for a more precise bibliometric analysis.

The data provided is a bibliometric coupling analysis where documents are the unit of analysis. The total link strength represents the strength of the relationship between the documents based on the number of shared citations.

The analysis shows that recent publications have relatively lower total link strength values than older ones. This suggests that the older publications have had more time to accumulate citations and establish themselves as seminal works in their respective fields.

Several highly cited documents, including Albaity's (2019) with 30 citations and Warsame's (2018) with 25 total link strength, suggest they are influential works in their respective fields.

There are also some documents with high citations but relatively low total link strength, such as Dewi's (2021), with only three total link strengths. This could indicate that the citations are spread across different topics or that the author's work is unrelated to other highly cited works. Overall, the data provide insights into the relationships between documents based on their shared citations, highlighting highly influential works and potential areas for further research.

Co-citation analysis is a method used in bibliometrics to analyze the frequency with which two documents are cited together in the bibliography of other documents. By identifying the frequently co-cited documents, researchers can identify essential relationships between publications and gain insights into the structure of a particular research field (Eck & Waltman, 2010).

The data in Figure 7 shows several sources have high co-citation counts, such as the "International Journal of Bank Marketing" with 55 co-citations and the "Journal of Islamic Marketing" with 53 co-citations. Therefore, these sources may be considered crucial or influential in the field of study being analyzed.

Additionally, some sources have high total link strength, which measures the total strength of the links between a source and all other sources in the analysis. For example, the "International Journal of Bank Marketing" has a total link strength of 40.67, indicating that it is strongly linked to other sources in the analysis.

In R, we used the keyword plus parameter to determine the thematic map. This parameter consists of words or phrases extracted through automated text analysis methods, such as keyword extraction algorithms. It helps us objectively and comprehensively explore research trends and concepts within a particular field. However, Author Keywords may offer a more nuanced and specific perspective based on individual authors' research interests and expertise. Visualization of the thematic map can be seen in Figure 8.

The top keywords for the thematic map are "asia", "article", "bangladesh", "finance", "pakistan", "banking", and "financial literacy". The keyword "asia" appears to be the most significant, with a weight of 20.77, indicating a high frequency and relevance in the articles included in the map. It is followed by "article" with a weight of 14.53, which suggests that the articles in this field may be more focused on research articles.

"Pakistan" and "Bangladesh" have relatively lower weights, indicating that they may not be as prevalent or relevant in the articles within the selected field.

"Finance" has a moderate weight of 1.25, indicating that it is a crucial keyword but not as much as "asia" or "article" "Banking" and "financial literacy" have lower weights, indicating less prevalent in the selected articles.

Based on the data cluster thematic map provided, the research theme appears to be related to finance and banking in the Asian region, with a particular focus on Pakistan and Bangladesh. In addition, the most frequently occurring keyword in the articles is "Asia," which indicates that this is the overarching topic of the literature.

The most prominent subtopics are within the theme of finance and banking in Asia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Furthermore, these two countries have the highest occurrence of keywords after "Asia," indicating that they are the most researched topics within this field.

Interestingly, while "financial literacy" is a subtopic related to finance and banking, it appears to have a lower occurrence in the literature than the other keywords. This suggests that this subtopic may not be as heavily researched as others within Asia's finance and banking theme.

Overall, this analysis indicates that the literature in this field primarily focuses on the broader topic of finance and banking in Asia, with a specific emphasis on Pakistan and Bangladesh. However, the results also suggest that researchers may want to explore the subtopic of financial literacy more thoroughly, as it appears to have a lower occurrence in the literature.