Purpose
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The paper investigates the body of literature on environmental management accounting (EMA) and provides a quantitative overview of the academic as well
as the professional literature constituting the field. By doing so, the paper discusses whether EMA has developed as a discipline.
Based on a database containing 814 (396 of them published in academic journals) publications in English, German and French with a publication date prior to 2012 a bibliometric analysis is conducted. Data on the publications, journals, authors and citations were collected, double-checked and examined by applying bibliometric measures.
The bibliometric analysis identifies trends in EMA research publications which show that EMA has developed as a young discipline, but is still faces challenges to get better established in mainstream accounting and
management research. Although the publication number is growing, a substantial part of the publications have been published outside mainstream accounting journals in non-accounting journals, books and reports. A recent trend towards establishing specialised environmental (and sustainability) accounting journals i
s also rendered apparent. The low number of highly cited publications of few authors, however, indicates that EMA is still to become
a mainstream field of research. The paper discusses with the help of bibliometric analysis and measures whether EMA has dev
eloped as a discipline and whether it has become part of mainstream accounting research.