Are Smart Cities Reshaping Local E-Govemment Research?

In this paper it is presented an exploratory study of the impact that the development of smart cities has for local e-government research. To inform the study, a bibliometric analysis is performed using the Scopus database as a source. Specifically, bibliometrics are used to compare three sets of documents: research documents addressing smart cities in general; research documents addressing local e-government; and research documents addressing smart cities in the scope of e-government. Despite the limitations that are inherent to a bibliometric analysis, the study allows the conclusions that the relevance of smart cities within local e-government research has grown to represent about 20% of the number of document published annually in the field, and that this contributed to broaden the range of subjects dealt with in the area.