Crowdsourcing and its relationship to wisdom of the crowd and insight building: a bibliometric study

First coined in 2006, the term ‘crowdsourcing’ began to appear as a concept in academic literature around 2009. Since then academic research on this topic has been showing a rising trend, most prominently in the field of computer science and its subfields. Analysis of the types of motivations for using crowdsourcing shows that extrinsic motivations are mentioned more often in the literature, compared to intrinsic ones. This serves to establish the perception of crowdsourcing as a research method for gaining robust insight on an issue, rather than as a recreational activity for personal development. Finally, the findings of this study reveal that China is emerging as the main funder and producer of papers on crowdsourcing.