Investigating the Trend of Scientific Production in Collective Decision-making Method in Wen of Science (WoS)

Using co-word analysis, the current study aims to investigate the trend of published research in the collective decision-making method as one of the most practical methods in different contexts of participatory governance. This study makes it possible to investigate the main topics of studies by studying published documents, combining metrics, and determining subject trend in decision-making. Using a quantitative approach and scientometrics techniques, this study aims at investigating scientific production in collective decision-making field in Web of Science as a reference database until August, 2022 (53 years ago). VOSviewer software and Excel were utilized to analyze the data and to present the charts. The distribution of publications rate in different countries and how they are distributed in authentic journals were investigated. 5173 keywords were found by investigating 1494 publications. The findings showed that the number of publications in this field has increased and the published keywords have changed from insects (such as bees and ants) to humanities fields (such as governance, participation, coordination, and cooperation). Because of the multiple challenges of the world’s governance systems in effectively managing communities, tensions, and disorders created in the relations between people and the government, participatory governance has attracted a lot of attention from the scientific community. The findings show that applying collective decision-making is an important method in participatory governance.