Research evolution in science parks and incubators: foundations and new trends

Abstract

In this paper we undertake a quantitative review of the existing literature on parks and incubators to identify their foundations from a longitudinal perspective. To do so, we searched records in the SSCI database from 1990 to 2015 and identified 318 citing documents, which we split into four periods of 5 years each, to identify the interactions and path dependence that exist between different foundations of research. We evaluate the evolution of the theoretical foundations of this research line taking into account changes in citations over time. We also identify areas of future research closely connected with the theoretical foundations already identified. For this purpose, we used two bibliometric techniques—co-citation analysis and bibliographic coupling—that enable us to assess the thematic similarity between scientific publications based on overlaps in their referencing patterns.