{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,21]],"date-time":"2026-03-21T20:35:22Z","timestamp":1774125322955,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":45,"publisher":"Emerald","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2022,7,8]],"date-time":"2022-07-08T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1657238400000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/www.emerald.com\/insight\/site-policies"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["LHT"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2022,8,22]]},"abstract":"<jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Purpose<\/jats:title><jats:p>This paper attempts to provide significant information on the increased growth of literature of chatbots and virtual assistants. Technological changes are dynamic and keep changing at regular intervals. Therefore, it becomes highly crucial to review the performance of chatbots and virtual assistants. This paper aims to review the literature by eminent researchers in the form of authors, keywords and major contributing organizations.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Design\/methodology\/approach<\/jats:title><jats:p>Systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis is used to analyze the growth of literature on chatbots. A sum of articles has been extracted from Scopus database with selected keywords and with certain filters. VOSviewer software is used for analysis of data. A total of 130 documents are extracted from Scopus database from 2017 to 2021 (31st August).<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Findings<\/jats:title><jats:p>This study provides a significant contribution to an existing literature and provides the understanding of research in the area of chatbots and virtual assistants. The authors with maximum number of citations are Yan, Zaho, Bengio, Weizenbaum, Song, Zhou and Maedche with jointly 180 citations. Research is been contributed by different countries where the United States is the country with highest number of documents published. The United States contributes 17% of the total production in the area of chatbots and virtual assistants. The analysis shows that the area is gaining momentum as contribution in this area is been increasing in last few years.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Research limitations\/implications<\/jats:title><jats:p>The study shows that several branches of chatbots are also in mainstream like natural language processing, e-learning, behavioural research, conversational agents, virtual assistants, human\u2013computer interaction, natural language and so on. It provides a wider scope to authors and researchers to gain useful insights. The bibliometric study will provide a broader spectrum in this area.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Social implications<\/jats:title><jats:p>The developments in technology and also the effect of COVID-19 pandemic is boosting the adoption of technology in different sectors. Deployment of technology will uplift the economy and social infrastructure. Society can avail different services from their comfort area and also in real time. This will help in reducing wastage of resources like people visiting offices for routine jobs which can be easily availed from their workplace. Society may access better services without much human interaction.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Originality\/value<\/jats:title><jats:p>This paper adds significant contribution to the existing literature by analysing the published papers from Scopus database. The study contains new and significant information as this study covers all industries where chatbots and virtual assistants are being applied whereas in previous literature only specific industry has been taken into consideration.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1108\/lht-09-2021-0330","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2022,7,6]],"date-time":"2022-07-06T10:06:45Z","timestamp":1657102005000},"page":"1013-1030","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":62,"title":["Chatbots and virtual assistants: a\u00a0bibliometric analysis"],"prefix":"10.1108","volume":"40","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5141-5204","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Shubhangi","family":"Agarwal","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Bhawna","family":"Agarwal","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-8801-0438","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ruchika","family":"Gupta","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]}],"member":"140","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2022,7,8]]},"reference":[{"issue":"8","key":"key2022081811573341200_ref001","article-title":"Review of chatbots design techniques article in international journal of computer applications \u00b7 August","volume":"181","year":"2018","journal-title":"International Journal of Computer Applications"},{"key":"key2022081811573341200_ref002","unstructured":"Boost.ai - Chatbot vs. Conversational AI | Go Beyond a Simple Chatbot (n.d), available at: https:\/\/www.boost.ai\/knowledge\/conversational-ai-vs-chatbot (accessed 23 December 2021)."},{"key":"key2022081811573341200_ref003","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","article-title":"Chatbots: changing user needs and motivations","year":"2018","DOI":"10.1145\/3236669"},{"issue":"2","key":"key2022081811573341200_ref004","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"48","DOI":"10.1109\/MCI.2014.2307227","article-title":"Jumping NLP curves: a review of natural language processing research","volume":"9","year":"2014","journal-title":"IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine"},{"issue":"4","key":"key2022081811573341200_ref005","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"685","DOI":"10.1007\/S13347-020-00415-6","article-title":"The whiteness of AI","volume":"33","year":"2020","journal-title":"Philosophy and Technology"},{"key":"key2022081811573341200_ref006","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"973","DOI":"10.1016\/j.future.2017.09.013","article-title":"Internet of Things, big data and complex information systems: challenges, solutions and outputs from IoTBD 2016, COMPLEXIS 2016 and CLOSER 2016 selected papers and CLOSER 2015 keynote","volume":"79","year":"2018","journal-title":"Future Generation Computer Systems"},{"key":"key2022081811573341200_ref007","unstructured":"Chatbots vs conversational AI: what\u2019s the difference? | WhosOn (n.d), available at: https:\/\/www.whoson.com\/chatbots-ai\/chatbots-vs-conversational-ai-whats-the-difference\/ (accessed 23 December 2021)."},{"key":"key2022081811573341200_ref008","article-title":"Network security view project a tool of conversation: chatbot","year":"2017","journal-title":"International Journal of Computer Sciences and Engineering"},{"key":"key2022081811573341200_ref009","unstructured":"Diederich, S., Brendel, A.B. and Kolbe, L. 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