A bibliometric review of scientific theory in futures and foresight: A commentary on Fergnani and Chermack 2021

We very much welcome the publication of Fergnani and Chermack (2021) as it makes an important contribution to the development of the foresight discipline. The important role of scientific theories in social science and across all disciplines has been reflected for decades (see, e.g., Parsons, 1938). With scientific theories, researchers can link the abstract world (the world of concepts/ideas) and the concrete world (the empirical/observable world) (Chibucos et al., 2005). It is, therefore, more than appropriate to question along with Fergnani and Chermack (2021, p. 1) and colleagues, “why the field of futures and foresight has not been successful at becoming part of the social scientific establishment”? The lack of a theoretical grounding in futures and foresight studies (FFS) has been mentioned and critically discussed by several authors (Hideg, 2007; Marien, 2010; Mermet et al., 2009; Öner, 2010; Piirainen & Gonzalez, 2015). With their recent conceptual analysis, Fergnani and Chermack (2021) build upon their observation and derive argumentative explanations as well as propose recommendations for further evolution in the scientific domain. They underline that “weak theoretical foundations prevent the field from becoming a recognized academic discipline of study in the academic establishment” (Fergnani & Chermack, 2021, p. 1). We have made similar observations in our own studies of the foresight field. However, despite some bibliometric analyses of the futures research domain in general (see, e.g., Fergnani, 2019) and various focused analyses of selected techniques (see, e.g., Flostrand et al., 2020), no such examination of scientific theory in FFS exists. Our commentary supports the underlying observations by Fergnani and Chermack (2021) by adopting a brief bibliometric lens on 50 years of cumulative scholarship (1973– January 2021) in 22 selected journals. These 22 journals include a total of 47,049 articles that were scanned. Based on our search criteria, we found 151 article matches (only 0.32 percent), of which a subset of 28 articles applied scientific theories from different disciplines.

dations for further evolution in the scientific domain. They underline that "weak theoretical foundations prevent the field from becoming a recognized academic discipline of study in the academic establishment" (Fergnani & Chermack, 2021, p. 1). We have made similar observations in our own studies of the foresight field. However, despite some bibliometric analyses of the futures research domain in general (see, e.g., Fergnani, 2019) and various focused analyses of selected techniques (see, e.g., Flostrand et al., 2020), no such examination of scientific theory in FFS exists. Our commentary supports the underlying observations by Fergnani and Chermack (2021) by adopting a brief bibliometric lens on 50 years of cumulative scholarship (1973( -January 2021 in 22 selected journals. These 22 journals include a total of 47,049 articles that were scanned. Based on our search criteria, we found 151 article matches (only 0.32 percent), of which a subset of 28 articles applied scientific theories from different disciplines.

| ME THODOLOG IC AL APPROACH
We chose the approach of bibliometric analysis, including bibliographic coupling, to measure and illustrate the resistance to scientific theory in futures and foresight. This method can be used to reconstruct the structural landscape of an academic field, which is why this approach is most appropriate for mapping research streams (Zupic & Čater, 2015). Bibliometric analysis includes the investigation of a body of literature regarding quantitative indicators such as citations, thematic associations, authorships, and geographical and institutional patterns (Ellegaard & Wallin, 2015).
A total of 151 publications were identified and subsequently analyzed with the VosViewer software (van Eck et al., 2010). We selected the articles for our review using two categories of keywords: (futures studies OR foresight OR judgemental forecasting OR judgmental forecasting OR futurology OR futurism OR anticipation OR scenario OR scenarios OR futures field) AND (theory OR theorizing OR theorising OR theoretical underpinnings). For our search, we chose Scopus as and covers minor research areas with more detail (Martín-Martín et al., 2018). Besides, the search was limited to a handful of relevant academic journals devoted in whole or in part to FFS (in alphabetical order; including the number of listed articles in Scopus): ( The limitation of the journals is based on the approaches and insights of various studies in the field of FFS (see, e.g., Fergnani, 2019, Park et al., 2020, or Tiberius et al., 2020. As part of our analysis, we divided the publications into two categories based on their primary contribution: (1) methodological and

| Descriptive results
(2) application. The same categorization already revealed valuable results in the analyses of Flostrand et al. (2020). Publications in the category "Methodological" are mainly dealing with the phenomenon of theorization in the field of FFS, with the development of techniques, as well as general or specific methodological aspects.
Publications of the category "Application" are using methods of FFS and include a scientific theory. Table 1 describes exemplary patterns used to classify the publications.
The classification was based on the titles and abstracts, and revealed that 123 articles (81.5 percent) deal with theorizing in the field of FFS (category "Methodological"). This contrasts with 28 publications (18.5%) that use, develop, or elaborate theories through the application of methods (category "Application"). In Figure 1, the de- The authors with the most published articles (more than three publications in the data sample) are shown in Table 2.  According to our analysis categories, George Wright is the most productive author and has published seven articles in our search domain so far. David Sarpong is the second most productive researcher with six publications, followed by George Burt with five research studies. Obviously, the group of most-productive authors often also appears as co-authors (see, e.g., additional theory-related articles: Cairns et al., 2016;Wright et al., 2013;Wright et al., 2017;Wright et al., 2020). In addition, Table 3 shows the number of total citations (TC) of an author. Furthermore, we examined which academic institution is among the most productive. With 17 publications, the University of Strathclyde takes first place, which is not surprising since two of the most productive authors (see Table 3) originate from this university.
In second and third place come the University of the West of England (11 publications) and the University of Oxford (10 publications).
We further took a look at the most influential papers, identi-  However, one paper published before the upswing is also included.
Eight of the ten publications are classified as "Methodological" while two papers fall into the category "Application" of scientific theory to FFS. Table 3 also lists the total citations (TC) of the publications as well as the rank of the publications by TC. We found that seven of the top ten publications ranked by CPY are also among the top ten publications ranked by TC. These publications have been highlighted in bold in the column "Rank (by TC)" in Table 3. The list of the top ten publications by TC additionally includes the paper of Rowe and Wright (1996) (ranked #4 by TC), the article by Burt (2007)   Bold indicates top ten publications ranked by CPY. a Indicates which term from the applied search query was used in the title (t), abstract (a), or keywords (k).
b Differentiation between Methodological and Application.

| Bibliographic coupling
To illustrate the co-citation relationship of authors, Figure 2   The visualization also includes color-coding to indicate the year of publication of the keywords.

Author(s)
Objective Link a Chermack (2005) The paper addresses the gap regarding research and theory development of scenario planning by constructing a theory of scenario planning and making research suggestions.
#8 Ramirez et al. (2015) The paper concludes that scenarios need to evolve from a research subject of scholars to a research methodology now used by scholars to produce theory-building research.

#7
Fuller and Loogma (2009) The paper concludes that foresight is both a social construction and a mechanism for social construction. (1996) The authors contribute to the methodological improvement of structured information exchange in nominal groups by addressing the rationale underlying such techniques and pointing out shortcomings in the research on the validity of the techniques themselves.

#8
Wilkinson (2009) The author analyzes scenario practices and concludes that they are under-researched and under-theorized.

#1
Meissner and Wulf (2013) The paper investigates the cognitive benefits of scenario planning by drawing on behavioral decision theory.

Roßmann et al. (2018)
The theory-based publication conducts a Delphi survey based on the organizational information processing theory.

#2
Burt (2007) The author develops a framework for describing disruption and/or discontinuity using Christensen's theory within the scenario methodology.

Andersen and
Andersen (2014) The publication contributed to theory building in the field of foresight with regard to the development of a systemic approach that focuses on innovation dynamics.

#2
Bowman et al. (2013) The paper analyzes the theoretical basis for scenario planning processes from the perspective of storytelling theory using an "inductive" method and a "deductive" method to determine why some scenario methods succeed and others fail.

Gordon et al. (2020)
The paper identifies three future research streams for further developing the research field of corporate and organizational foresight through a review.

#8
Bootz et al. (2019) The authors analyze foresight and knowledge management and find similar results to Fergnani and Chermack (2021), that is, the field is approaching a level of maturity that requires ongoing theoretical investigative efforts to position the field from a methodological perspective.

#1
Piirainen et al. (2017) The paper follows the call to use theory in foresight by applying the theory to the dynamics of smart specialization in the context of an empirical study.

#2
a Indicates to which of the nine reasons, identified by Fergnani and Chermack (2021), the content of the article is concerned: 1 = Different use of the term "theory," 2 = Lack of training in theory building and theory testing, 3 = Misunderstanding of what scientific assessment is, 5 = Disinterest in doing science, 6 = Misplaced conscious/subconscious social constructionist worldviews, 7 = Misplaced conscious/subconscious post normal worldviews, 8 = Enjoyment of being outliers.

TA B L E 4
Linking the most-cited articles (by TC and CPY) to Fergnani and Chermack (2021)

| CON CLUDING REMARK
With our commentary, we enrich the debate on the resistance to scientific theory in futures and foresight. Our bibliometric analysis, including bibliographic illustration, complements earlier observations with distinct measures and illustrations. Furthermore, we can reveal several key findings that contribute to the conceptual analysis of Fergnani and Chermack (2021).
We confirm that compared with theorizing in other scientific disciplines, the frequency and self-conception of its use in FFS is very limited. Even though the first publications date back to 1973, most articles focus on the recent past. As a consequence, we see a con- Complimentary to the analysis of Fergnani and Chermack (2021), the following thoughts are of particular interest: ▪ We have to differentiate between a foresight theory and the application of theories to foresight. Momentarily there is not an overall foresight theory or "one-size-fits-all theory" visible on the horizon (see Phillips, 2021, on Bothamley (1993) has compiled more than 5,000 theories, laws, hypotheses, principles, rules, theorems, 'ologies, and 'isms from all subject areas. Also, we found the Handbook of Anticipation valuable, which its editors and authors consider "the first systematic exploration of the theory and practice of anticipation" (Preface, p. v) (Poli, 2019). Such theory-related compendia also exist for specific domains like psychology, philosophy and social sciences and might be a good initial orientation for setting up research endeavors.
Fergnani and Chermack (2021) elaborate on critical realism theory and suggest its application in FFS research. In our analysis, we could neither find an application of this theory so far nor a dominant use of another single theory. Although small in absolute numbers, we found various theories from different scientific domains being used in the field of FFS.
This observation supports the general paradigm of FFS as F I G U R E 4 Bibliographic coupling of keywords of the publications in category "Application" being a meta-discipline (Bell, 2003;Slaughter, 2002) that applies various methods transdisciplinary and draws on a broad base of literature and knowledge from all the other disciplines (Blass, 2003). It is important to emphasize that for this commentary we analyzed a limited set of 22 selected journals only.
Complimentary analyses could include additional journals to capture publications not published in traditional FFS journals, among them, for example, Chermack (2004) in Human Resource Development Review, Hirschinger et al. (2015) in Journal of Supply Chain Management, Wright et al. (2019) in European Journal of Operational Research or Suddendorf and Corballis (2007) in Behavioral and Brain Sciences. A search for the exact terms "theory" AND "foresight" in Google Scholar reveals 303.000 hits indicating further valuable contributions across various disciplines and publications outlets. For an expanded analysis across further disciplines and publication formats, the application of a more granular review framework like TCCM (T stands for theory, C for context, C for characteristics, and M for methodology) might be beneficial (see Paul and Rosado-Serrano, 2019).

ACK N OWLED G EM ENT
Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.

DATA AVA I L A B I L I T Y S TAT E M E N T
The data that support the findings of this study are available in Elsevier Scopus at www.scopus.com