Mapping the E-Government Research with Social Network Analysis

About fifteen years of e-government research (EGR) lead to a research field that is looking forward to define an identity as a proper and autonomous scientific discipline. This paper proposes the use of social network analysis as a methodology for building a map of EGR and consequently contributing to the process of establishing EGR identity. The paper analyzes the network of citation between authors induced by papers published in the four proceedings of this conference (International Conference on e-Government) in the period from 2005 to 2008. The analysis helps us identify the authors that had most influence on the EGR field development and relate them to the thematic topics that prevailed the conference papers in the last four years.