Crowdsourcing: A snapshot of published research

Abstract

Crowdsourcing, originally defined as “taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in an open call,” is a distributed, collaborative, cross-organizational process seeing increased use among practitioners. As such, crowdsourcing presents great opportunities for information systems (IS) and business-related research. This paper presents preliminary findings from a foundational literature review of published crowdsourcing research from 2006 onward. We identify what crowdsourcing research is going on, where it is going on, and its foci. Our findings document increasing research interest in crowdsourcing and identify the primary publication outlets and home countries of authors involved in that research. Finally, we present a keyword analysis for identified articles, and relate those keywords to a preliminary framework describing crowdsourcing. These findings provide a good summary of current crowdsourcing research, and will help guide researchers interested in further crowdsourcing study.