A Decade and Beyond of Social Entrepreneurship Research: Bibliometric Analysis (2014–2025)

Abstract

This study delivers a comprehensive, updated bibliometric examination of Social Entrepreneurship Research (SER) spanning from 2014 to 2025. It evaluates critical structural components within the literature, including annual scientific outputs, preeminent publishing sources, seminal core articles, highly prolific authors, and collaborative networks. Furthermore, this analysis explores the field’s intellectual architecture by investigating evolutionary trends in author keywords and emerging thematic priorities up to 2025. The bibliometric results indicate that Sustainability stands as the most prominent publishing outlet with 68 published articles, closely followed by the Journal of Social Entrepreneurship (59 articles) and the Proceedings of the European Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (33 articles). Among top-tier articles, Saebi et al. (2019) remains the most structurally impactful work with 598 citations. Within the global authorship network, Chandra from the City University of Hong Kong continues to lead the field, followed closely by Vázquez-Parra and Ramírez-Montoya from Tecnológico de Monterrey. Keyword co-occurrence analysis reveals a highly concentrated emphasis on "social entrepreneurship" (912 occurrences), "entrepreneurship" (264 occurrences), "social enterprise" (124 occurrences), and "social innovation" (115 occurrences). The findings move beyond descriptive summaries to contextualize these trends against institutional mandates, digital transformation, and structural transitions within the post-pandemic, SDG-driven academic landscape.