A bibliometric analysis of quality research papers in Islamic finance: evidence from Web of Science

Introduction

Islamic finance is a system that is based on Islamic principles and values. It eliminates ribā (interest) and ensures a financial system, which is ḥalāl (permissible). It is characterized by the absence of interest-based financial institutions and transactions, doubtful transactions or uncertainty (gharar), stocks of companies dealing in unlawful activities and unethical or immoral transactions such as market manipulation, insider trading and short-selling (Naqvi, 1977; Khan, 1995; Al-Jarhi, 2016; Öndeş et al., 2019). Since its modern inception in the 1960s, the Islamic finance industry has operated mainly through five sub-sectors: Islamic banking, takāful (Islamic insurance), other Islamic financial institutions, ṣukūk (Islamic investment certificates) and Islamic funds. The demand for Sharīʿah-compliant products and services has over the years recorded significant growth with global assets of the Islamic financial services industry reaching US$2.44tn as of 2019 (The Islamic Financial Services Board, 2020). The Islamic Financial Services Board (2020) reveals that the Islamic finance industry achieved a moderate growth of 11.4% in 2019 as compared to 3% in 2018. Assets held by the global Islamic banking sector grew by 2% to US$1.77tn in 2019 from US$1.57tn in 2018 while those of takāful increased by 1% over the same period. Assets held by other Islamic financial institutions were reported to have witnessed some decline. The slowdown in growth was attributed to slowdowns in the industry’s leading markets, notably Iran, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia (ICD-Refinitiv, 2019; Islamic Financial Services Board, 2020).

Islamic finance is evolving rapidly and continues to expand to serve a growing population of Muslims and non-Muslims; it is not confined to traditional Muslim and Arab markets. The active role of the UK in its development is described by some experts as a “standalone” experiment in the development and promotion of Islamic finance outside the Muslim and Arab worlds. In addition, the role of some US financial institutions in the development and promotion of Islamic finance is notable (Ahmid and Öndeş, 2019).

The first academic journal dedicated to Islamic finance was launched in 1983 by King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia and was followed by a similar publication from the Islamic Research and Training Institute (IRTI), which is also located in Saudi Arabia. To date, a number of studies have been carried out on the subject of Islamic finance; some of these studies have focused on bibliometric analysis of Islamic finance literature (Al-Jarhi, 2016; Lone, 2016; Shehatta and Mahmood, 2017; Firmansyah and Faisal, 2019; Rahman et al., 2020). The bibliometric studies are largely related to Islamic banking and finance, ṣukūk literature, PhD dissertations and Islamic economics literature. Other studies have analysed the state of research journals and high-quality papers in Scopus and Web of Science (WoS).

Most of the literature on bibliometric analysis of Islamic finance has covered relatively few areas of focus and a lower range of years in some cases. For example, some studies have just analysed the literature on ṣukūk investment, PhD dissertations and in some instances analysis of articles published in one journal. Thus, a more comprehensive bibliometric study that focuses on more subjects and/or topics in the WoS journals might reveal a different conclusion. The WoS database has shown an upward trend in the publishing of high-quality research papers in Islamic finance (Lone, 2016).

Hence, this paper seeks to provide a more comprehensive bibliometric analysis on the growth of Islamic finance literature in the WoS indexed journals over the period 1939 to 2019, covering 80 years of literature. The current study is original and up-to-date, as it contains new and significant information. It should be clarified that over the period 1939–1990. Only a few works were published, so the significant period of coverage is substantively from 1990 onwards – a period which is covered by this paper. Findings from the current study will be beneficial to the Islamic finance industry by revealing important details that can help shape their policies. In addition, it will highlight how the industry can lend support to this type of research. Specifically, the study aims to answer the following research questions:

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The second section presents a brief review of the related literature while the third section outlines the methodology used. The fourth section presents the results obtained from the bibliometric analysis. Discussion of the results is presented in the fifth section. The last section concludes the paper.

Literature review

Bibliometric study is considered robust and appropriate for a number of reasons:

• it enables an overview of the scientific literature;

• it provides a critical and objective summary of selected scientific papers; and

• it entails analysis of data that may have more relevance than subjective analyzes (Andrés, 2009; Shehatta and Mahmood, 2017).

A small number of bibliometric analyses have been conducted of Islamic finance literature; these studies have focused specifically on Islamic banking and finance (Narayan and Phan, 2019), investment in ṣukūk literature (Paltrinieri et al., 2019; Rahman et al., 2020) and PhD dissertations carried out in the field of Islamic finance (Ahmid and Öndeş, 2019). Others have analysed the state of research journals and high-quality papers in Scopus and WoS (Ridhwan et al., 2013; Lone, 2016). In addition, some studies have focused on the evaluation of Islamic economics literature (Firmansyah and Faisal, 2019).

Table 1 provides a summary of selected studies that have conducted a bibliometric analysis of Islamic finance literature. Most of the studies shown in the table covered the period 2000–2019 (Harande, 2008; Ridhwan et al., 2013; Lone, 2016; Ahmid and Öndeş, 2019). Few studies covered a longer period of time ranging from 1950 to 2019 (Othman et al., 2009; Paltrinieri et al., 2019; Rahman et al., 2020). A visual inspection of Table 1 reveals that the studies have different focuses, have used different approaches and have arrived at different conclusions. These studies provide a basis of comparison for the current study, which is focused on wider themes and concentrates on a much longer period of time. For example, Harande (2008) carried out a bibliometric analysis of Islamic economics literature that sought to find the periodic growth, author patterns, geographical origin and language of dispersion in the literature.

The study by Harande (2008) was based on 51 publications collected from a journal titled Thoughts on Economics for the period 2000–2006, covering seven years of data. He found that 77% of the published papers emanated from Bangladesh while the remaining 23% were shared amongst nine countries. More than 70% of the publications were by a single author. In total, 88% of the publications were in the English language while publications in Urdu constituted 19.6%. Surprisingly, none of the publications was in Arabic. In addition, Othman et al. (2009) conducted a co-citation analysis of Islamic finance literature. The authors focused on highly co-cited authors, highly cited documents, highly cited themes, research fronts and the strength of the co-cited documents. They found that research fronts in Islamic finance strongly focused on ribā and the contribution from Islamic economics. They also documented that highly co-cited authors were from an Islamic economics background.

Ridhwan et al. (2013) conducted a bibliometric analysis of articles published by The Journal of Muamalat and Islamic Finance Research over a period of eight years (2004–2011). The authors analysed 91 articles. Data from each volume of the journal were collected and statistically analysed by using the SPSS software. This study examined many variables, including authorship patterns, length of articles, number of articles published, author’s productivity, contributing institutions and subject area patterns. Dual authorship was found to be prevalent, accounting for 57% of the published articles during the period. The paper also revealed that 80% of the articles were published in English. More recently, Lone (2016) analysed the state of research journals and high-quality papers in Scopus and WoS over the period 2000–2016. The study concentrated on the growth rate, articles indexed, yearly data of papers, number of papers, author scores, university/institution scores and country scores. The author found a significant increase in the number of new journals and published articles from 2012 to 2014. On the affiliation of authors, the study ranked three Malaysian universities as having the highest number of authors followed by the USA and UK, respectively. Surprisingly, Saudi Arabia was fifth on the list.

Narayan and Phan (2019) focused on Islamic bank performance, equity market performance, asset pricing, Islamic bonds, market interactions and ethical issues in finance. The study surveyed 112 articles that were published in top journals. They found that the topic of research is deeply skewed towards bank performance followed by equity market performance.

Paltrinieri et al. (2019) conducted a survey of the ṣukūk literature over the period 1950–2018. They used HistCite and VOS-viewer bibliometric software and content analysis to analyse 80 articles that were obtained from WoS. The authors found influential aspects of the literature to include countries, institutions, journals, authors, articles and topics. Furthermore, they identified three research streams, including:

1. ṣukūk overview and growth;

2. ṣukūk and finance theories; and

3. ṣukūk and stock market behaviour.

Similarly, Rahman et al. (2020) in their most recent study carried out a bibliometric analysis of socially responsible investment (SRI) ṣukūk literature. They used VOS-viewer software to review 232 peer-reviewed papers from the WoS database over the period 1970–2019. Rahman et al. (2020) found that the literature on SRI ṣukūk is mainly split into three research clusters:

1. nature of SRI ṣukūk;

2. competitiveness of SRI ṣukūk; and

3. determinants of SRI ṣukūk.

The paper also suggested that there was a high level of collaboration between authors from Malaysia, Australia and the USA.

Ahmid and Öndeş (2019) analysed PhD dissertations on Islamic banking and finance in the UK for a period of 19 years (2000–2018). The authors drew a general map in terms of title, author gender, university, the year and number of dissertations. Data were obtained from the database of the British Library. The study revealed that more than 70% of the dissertations were authored by male candidates and that Durham University had the highest number of dissertations amongst the UK universities.

A recent study by Ali and AlQuradaghi (2019) investigated the academic polemics, stakeholder perceptions and publishing prospects for Islamic economics and finance (IEF) research. To achieve these objectives, the authors used both quantitative and qualitative methods in their study. Specifically, they searched through selected databases to identify leading journals and publishing outlets for IEF research. The study also conducted a survey of IEF experts and interviewed major stakeholders with a view to determining the current trends and future perspectives of IEF research. They documented an increasing interest in IEF research and research output over the past three decades. Firmansyah and Faisal (2019) also conducted a bibliometric analysis on the performance of Islamic economics and finance journals. The data were derived from journals published by Indonesian universities. The study revealed the top five IEF journals in Indonesian universities and the 10 most productive researchers.

Methodology

Bibliometric analysis is an established quantitative method to investigate publishing patterns of scholarly work and it is mostly used in library and information science research to investigate the publishing trends and patterns of topics under investigation. Hence, this study applies a bibliometric analysis in the field of Islamic finance.

The WoS database was used at Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University (IAU), Dammam, Saudi Arabia in September 2019 and data were retrieved on 12 September 2019. WoS is one of the largest peer-reviewed and authentic indexing and abstracting databases of scientific literature. The study is restricted in the document types that it covers, including only articles, proceedings, reviews and book chapters.

The targeted data were retrieved applying the following search queries in the main searching box of WoS: “Islamic Finance*” OR Musharaka OR Sukuk OR “Islamic Capital Market*” OR Takaful OR “Islamic Insurance” OR Mudaraba OR Kafalah OR Murabaha OR Gharar OR Mudarib OR “Bai Inah” OR Musharaka OR Qirad OR Waqaf OR Zakat OR Zakah OR “Qard Hasan” OR Mutajara OR Tawarruq OR Maysir OR Riba OR “Islamic Accounting” OR “Islamic Investment Partnership” OR “Islamic Leasing” OR Istisnaa OR “Bai Al Ajel” OR “Bai al Arboon” OR “Islamic guarantee*” OR “Islamic Bond*” OR “Islamic Tax*” OR “Ijarah” OR “Islamic Charity*” OR “Islamic Trust*” OR “Islamic Stock*” OR “Islamic equity fund*” OR “Islamic Funds”.

After running the above query, the following WoS category: “business finance or ethics or economics or business or management or religion or social sciences interdisciplinary or law or computer science theory methods or international relations or history or political science or planning development or humanities multidisciplinary or computer science information systems” was selected.

The excluded types of documents were “early access or editorial material or correction or letter or book review”. The total results contained 1,235 records. Each record was counter-checked to ensure the relevancy of the data. This practice helped to remove 25 irrelevant records and a total of 1,210 records were found to be correct for data analysis. There was no language filter applied while data retrieving and more than 95% of records were in English (1,167) followed by Malay (14), Turkish (11), Russian (10), French (2), Czech (2) and one each from Spanish, Polish, Indonesian and Croatian. The accuracy of the results was ensured by repeating this process. The researchers used MS Excel, MS Access and VOS-viewer software for data analysis.

Results

Discussion

This paper seeks to provide a bibliometric analysis of the development of Islamic finance literature in WoS indexed journals over the period 1939–2019, covering 80 years of data. A number of interesting points emerged from the results presented in the third section.

Firstly, there was an appreciable rise of publications on Islamic finance in the past five years covered in this study (i.e. 2015–2019). Such a remarkable surge in the Islamic finance literature might be connected with a similar rise in the number of journals that provide additional outlets for such publications. The absence of similar research efforts might be responsible for the low number of publications in Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Pakistan, the UAE and other countries that have contributed to the literature in Islamic finance.

Secondly, another factor that can explain the high number of publications from Malaysian universities is the conducive atmosphere, which has been created by the government and research and training institutions operating in the country. Governmental support has always been a significant factor in driving the development of the Islamic finance market in Malaysia. Research and training centres on Islamic finance in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Bahrain and the UAE should be encouraged to publish more articles on Islamic finance. In addition, Islamic finance should be included in the curriculum of undergraduate students of social and management sciences (i.e. finance, management, accounting, business administration and economics). In Saudi Arabia, two universities, notably Al-Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University (IMSIU) and King Abdulaziz University, are at the forefront of Islamic finance research and should be encouraged and supported to produce more research on Islamic finance in both Arabic and English. At present, WoS has a separate index called Arabic Citation Index which indexes Arabic articles. This Arabic Citation Index should be searched to examine the indexing of Islamic finance articles written in Arabic. There is a need for high-profile journals on Islamic finance (such as ISRA International Journal of Islamic Finance published in Arabic) to collaborate with WoS and Scopus to provide such a platform. In addition to providing a platform for journals in the Arabic language, the WoS may explore other languages such as Urdu, Persian or Hindi.

Thirdly, nine out of the 10 most cited articles on Islamic finance were fairly recent. These studies were published from 2006 to 2018, which indicates that Islamic finance as a discipline is gaining momentum. Only one study was conducted in 1987. This momentum needs to be maintained by all stakeholders of this emerging field of knowledge. Another interesting finding was that some of these studies were carried out by non-Muslims, which showed how the topic of Islamic finance has gained acceptance in the literature.

Fourthly, the current study confirms earlier findings on the growth of Islamic finance literature. The results in the third section reveal a significant rise in the number of articles that have recently been published in top-ranking journals. However, this study is in a number of ways an extension of prior literature; it has covered more themes and 80 years of prior literature in Islamic finance. On the other hand, Lone (2016) analysed the state of research journals and high-quality papers on Islamic finance for only 16 years covering seven related themes. Similarly, Othman et al. (2009) and Narayan and Phan (2019) conducted bibliometric analysis and focused on a fewer number of themes than this study. More recently, the studies by Paltrinieri et al. (2019) and Rahman et al. (2020) were limited to one theme, i.e. ṣukūk literature.

Fifthly, results from the current study contradict Lone’s (2016) findings on publishing trends due to disparity in the publishing dates. This study documents 2015–2019 as the peak period while Lone (2016) found 2012–2014 as the most prolific period on Islamic finance publications. The reason why the peak period is different in Lone’s study is that the study was undertaken most probably in 2015, and therefore at that time the peak period for publications was 2012–2014. Our study confirms the findings of Lone (2016) on research productivity in which Malaysia, the USA and the UK were ranked first, second and third, respectively. Our finding is also similar to that of Othman et al. (2009), who concluded that Islamic finance is strongly focused on ribā and contributions from Islamic economics.

Conclusion

This paper provides a bibliometric analysis of the growth of Islamic finance literature in WoS indexed journals over the period 1939–2019. In recent years, research on Islamic finance appears to be gaining momentum in the literature. However, such a rise is largely manifested in Malaysia due to a more conducive atmosphere for this kind of investigation. Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Indonesia, the UAE, Pakistan and Bahrain should increase their efforts to support research in Islamic finance. King AbdulAziz University was one of the early institutions that contributed to the emergence of Islamic finance as a discipline; however, this pioneering effort has been overtaken by Malaysian universities, training centres and research institutes. More support should be extended to Saudi universities and research institutes (such as IRTI). The establishment of more research institutes and the inclusion of Islamic finance as a course at the university level will go a long way in improving research in this area. Similar efforts would improve the current state of Islamic finance research in Bahrain, the UAE, Pakistan and other countries that have made some modest contribution in Islamic finance literature. At present, ISRA publishes an Arabic journal in Islamic finance with the same title as the English journal, i.e. ISRA International Journal of Islamic Finance (Arabic). However, this Journal is not indexed so far. We recommend that this important journal should be indexed in the WoS Arabic citation index. In addition, more Arabic journals in Islamic finance need to be developed by other institutions, especially in the Arab world.

This is a bibliometric study and is limited to one abstracting and indexing database, i.e. WoS. The research is further limited to the literature on Islamic finance published till 2019. The study is also restricted in the document types that it covers, including only articles, proceedings, reviews and book chapters. It would be interesting if further research could be undertaken to compare the output and quality of publications in Islamic finance and mainstream finance.

This study is helpful in understanding the current status of Islamic finance literature in respect of publishing trends, top countries, authors, organizations, journals and frequently used keywords for Islamic finance studies. The study reveals that Islamic finance has gained significant growth in the literature. Hence, it is the need and role of Muslim-majority countries to create awareness about Islamic finance by including it as a subject in the curriculum and promoting more multilingual research, especially in languages such as Arabic and other local languages (besides English) to help local communities better understand the operations of Islamic finance. The countries should also encourage the inception of more journals on Islamic finance to create more platforms for publishing research in this area. In this regard, government support and the role of the academic community will play a crucial role.