Abstract

We examined the international scientific productivity on auditing between 2002, when the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was published, and the end of 2013, based on a bibliometrics/scientometrics analysis of scientific articles included in the Web of Science from the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). A database was created including 2,394 publications. As a contribution it was possible to systematically identify the main features of the auditing publications in the extended literature through bibliometrics and scientometrics analysis for the creation of its state of art in auditing. It is important that other researchers study the reason for the growth in auditing publications and identify relevant concepts, theories, methodologies, and emerging issues that have arisen in the field of auditing considering that there is a transactional empirical gap for future studies in the literature.

Key words: Bibliometrics, scientometrics, scientific production, Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), literature review.