Research on Big Data Characterizing the Field and Its Dimensions

Big Data has emerged as a significant area of study for both practitioners and researchers. Big Data is a term for massive data sets with large structure. In 2012, Big Data passed the top of the Gartner Hype Cycle, attesting the maturity level of this technology and its applications. The aim of this paper is to examine whether the Big Data research community reached the same level of maturity. For this purpose, we provide a framework identifying existing and emerging research areas of Big Data. This framework is based on five dimensions, including the SMACIT perspective. Current and past research in Big Data are analyzed using a bibliometric study of publications based on more than a decade of related academic publications. The results have shown that even if significant contributions have been made by the research community, attested by a continuous increase in the number of scientific publications that address Big Data, it lags behind entreprises' expectations.