Author(s)

Qun Cao, Yali Zhang, Qian Xu, Gang Wang, Zhe Yuan

Corresponding Author

Yali Zhang

Abstract

Forensic accounting is the use of financial-legal knowledge and investigative skills to conduct fraud checks, consulting services, dispute resolution and other review activities. In order to explore the development characteristics and emerging trends of forensic accounting in the past 20 years, the literature of forensic accounting from 2000 to 2020 was reviewed. The review is based on two sets of bibliographic records retrieved from the Web of Science. The core dataset, consisting of 2,120 original research papers, was constructed from a topic search. The expanded dataset, consisting of 17,991 articles, was constructed by citation expansion. The overall structure of its intellectual landscape is characterized in terms of thematic concentrations of co-cited references and emerging trends of surging keywords and citations to references through a scientometric review. The research in this article draws the conclusion, Forensic accounting: (i) lacks accurate definitions of disciplines. (ii)needs to combine data analysis capabilities with IT technology to detect abnormal transactions, analyze hidden relationships, and identify potential fraud in the era of big data. (iii) has very intensive research on fraud detection, and non-fraud issues require our in-depth research.

Keywords

Scientometrics analysis, Forensic accounting, Fraud, Corporate governance