The Low-Code Phenomenon: Mapping the Intellectual Structure of Research

The term low-code has been closely associated with simplifying and accelerating software development. Driven by the idea that low-code can help to meet the increased digitalization demands, the low-code phenomenon is rising in academia and industry. This resulted in an immense increase in publications on low-code, posing the question of what research streams characterize the low-code literature. Conducting bibliometric analysis on 725 articles, we unpack the intellectual structure of low-code literature and uncover how it relates to other research fields. Our contribution is to clarify the conceptual understanding of low-code by identifying six research streams, namely, origins of low-code within software engineering (SE), low-code as an enabler for emerging SE trends, workplace transformation, establishing low-code methodologies, understanding low-code adoption and leveraging low-code for digital transformation. We conclude with future research directions that still need to be explored within the low-code literature.