The research trends forecasted by bibliometric methodology: a case study in e-commerce from 1996 to July 2015

This study explores e-commerce (EC) research trends and forecasts applying bibliometric analysis from 1996 to July 2015 with topic as "e-commerce" in SSCI database. The bibliometric analytical technique is used to examine the topic in SSCI journals from 1996 to July 2015, we found 5429 articles with EC. This paper surveys and classifies EC articles using the eight categories for different distribution status in order to explore how EC research trends and applications have developed in this period. Besides, the paper will perform K-S test to verify the reliability of Lotka's Law. The study provides an EC roadmap to guide future research and abstract the trend information so that EC researchers can save some time to browse sources since core knowledge will be concentrated in EC core categories. In higher quality publications, it is very common for "success breeds success" phenomenon.