This paper focuses on providing a methodological tool to prepare a bibliographic portfolio of articles for Junior researchers or In-Training researchers, especially in the field of entrepreneurship or Business Innovation. However, this is not a literature review or a state-of-the-art report concerning the object of study. For this purpose, Elsevier's Scopus (hereafter Scopus) Database was used, the foremost abstract and citation databank of peer-reviewed literature, considering bibliometric indicators of papers published in journals ranked in SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR indicator), specifically over a four-year period i.e., from 2015 to 2018.

Regarding the creation of a bibliographic portfolio of articles, the recent development of well-known Methodi Ordinatio is worth reporting, due to its good results as a methodological proposal for selecting and classifying relevant scientific articles covering impact factor, number of citations and year of publication (Negri et al., 2015). Thus, in order to carry out a future study on the "innovation" variable, including a broad analysis of the state of the art, the use of this method is suggested. Debe cortar cada oración, hay aproximadamente 4 ideas mezcladas en 1, demasiado densas las oraciones. Deben ser más simples. (Véase la nota del autor principal (Anónimo))

Observing business organizations, they are not linear. They are not juxtapositions of areas, sections, departments, subsidiaries and/or other aggregates. Rather, organization's parts are a whole structure with strong interactions among them, i.e., they establish a system in which positive or negative synergies can occur. In fact, they occur visibly or invisibly. This indicates that a structural-systemic methodology for the study of business organizations is required, framed in what Martínez has called "Systemic Ontology" (2013, p. 33).

The breadth of topics that are relevant to organizations under constant turbulence, both in theory and praxis, uncovers the need to form multi and interdisciplinary research groups with a systemic view and qualitative methods. This is necessary to generate transdisciplinary knowledge to propose solutions to their problems or continuous improvements.

Therefore, with the adoption of a systemic paradigm for the expansion of science and technology, research designs in social sciences today should be primarily based on qualitative methodologies, which are grounded on hermeneutical, phenomenological, and ethnographic approaches.

Based on the previous considerations, this study focu ses on research designs included in 85 (eighty-five) scholarly articles related to Innovation published in 11 (eleven) journals indexed in Scopus. The particular topic(s) were reviewed, which allowed revealing trends or new perspectives in this study.

However, within the qualitative studies preliminary checked, the lack of a systemic approach in the methodological designs of most of the articles persists, which could be a generalized trend in this type of studies given the increasing complexity of the reality and environment of business organizations.

Based on the above-mentioned issues, the following research question arised: What topics of innovation have been investigated over the past 4 years? There fore, the purpose of the present study was to describe trends in research designs concerning innovation in scientific articles published in journals indexed in Scopus. For this, research designs were characterized according to their paradigmatic orientation, whether quantitative, qualitative or mixed, and the relevant study topics or keywords were reported.

In order to reach the proposed, this study was divided into four stages. The first one focuses on the objectives pursued and the approach to the research topic. In the second stage, some theoretic-conceptual references on business innovations are described. The third stage includes online data collection from Scopus. It also illustrates the characterization and interpretation of the data.

The last stage focuses on the result of reflections arising from the outcome of the process indicated above. It highlights the need to establish academic research programs based on systemic paradigm with qualitative approaches.

The relevance of this study is explained by the current challenge faced by research in the field of Social Sciences (so-called soft sciences), in the sense of moving away from determinism, verification and predictability of the scientific method, typical of the so-called "hard sciences" (Basic Sciences) but of little or no applicability in the social field. In this sense, research in the field of organizations should be inscribed in a systemic vision of reality, given the inherent complexity of the social and societies.

First, the data analysis and results of 85 (eighty-five) articles examined belonging to 11 (eleven) reviewed journals are illustrated in graph 1 and graph 2. Tables 1 and 2 contain the items of 2 (two) of those periodical journals: Table 1 referred to Journal of Technology Management and Innovation (country: Chile), Q3 (Q1 to Q4 refer to journal ranking quartiles within a sub-discipline using the SJR citation index) and Table 2 referred to Quality Innovation Prosperity journal (country: Slovakia), Q3.

The other 9 reviewed journals were: 2. Interfaces (country: United States); 3. Q2; Management and Production Engineering Review (country: Poland); 4. Q2; Asian Journal of Shipping and Logistics (country: Netherlands); 5. Q2; International Journal of Tech nology (country: Indonesia); Q3; 6. Knowledge and E-Learning (country: China), Q3; 7. Eastern European Journal of Enterprise Technologies (country: United Arab Emirates), Q3; 8. Bank and Bank Systems (country: Ukraine), Q3; and 9. Intangible Capital (country: Spain), Q3.

Graph 1 Source: Own elaboration. Note: Definitions of abbreviations: N: quantitative nature; L: Qualitative nature; M: Mixed nature (both N as L).

Graph 2 Source: Own elaboration. Note: Definitions of abbreviations: N: quantitative nature; L: Qualitative nature; M: Mixed nature (both N as L).

Table 1

Source: Source: Own elaboration. Data from Scopus (2019) and adapted to the methodological guidelines of this study.

Table 2

Source: Data from Scopus (2019) adapted to methodological guidelines of this study. TC: Total citations; PN: Paradigmatic nature or character of the study and/or of its research design; IT: Innovation type: 1. Product (or service); 2. Process; 3. Marketing; 4. Organizational; 5: 1, 2; 6: 1, 3; 7: 1, 4; 8: 2, 3; 9: 2, 4; 10: 1, 2, 3; 11: 1, 2, 4; 12: 2, 3, 4; 13: 1, 3, 4; 14: 1, 2, 3, 4; 15: Not microeconomic but macroeconomic type; N: Quantitative nature; L: Qualitative nature; M: Mixed nature (both N as L).

As shown in Graph 1, within the total data-analysis pertaining to all papers examined, those of Paradig matic nature, PN: N-type show a trend in proportion of 40%, while L and N types show 60% (34% and 26% respectively). In frequency of citations (Graph 2), N-Type items (49%) prevail. Likewise, there is a great variety of items corresponding to IT: 2-type (21%), 4-type (14%), 15-type (14%), 5-type (13%) and 15-type (14%), which total 76%. Finally, absence of IT: 7-type and 13-type is highlighted.

For illustrative purpose of the organization and data analysis that led to the results in Table 1, the analysis of the articles in the Journal and Technology Management and Innovation is presented in Table 2 below. As in Table 2, the results of the analysis of the articles in the journal Quality Innovation Prosperity are presented in Table 3.

Table 3

Source: Source: Data from Scopus (2019) and adapted to the methodological guidelines of this study. TC: Total citations; PN: Paradigmatic nature or character of the study and/or of its research design; IT: Innovation type: 1. Product (or service); 2. Process; 3. Marketing; 4. Organizational; 5: 1, 2; 6: 1, 3; 7: 1, 4; 8: 2, 3; 9: 2, 4; 10: 1, 2, 3; 11: 1, 2, 4; 12: 2, 3, 4; 13: 1, 3, 4; 14: 1, 2, 3, 4; 15: Not microeconomic but macroeconomic type; N: Quantitative nature; L: Qualitative nature; M: Mixed nature (both N as L).

The route of this work has made it possible to reveal that the quantitative paradigm of research in the field of innovation is not prevalent, as it has been previously appreciated through non-systematic reviews by the authors of this study. The global results prove this assertion, as it can be seen in Graph 1, in which articles framed in the quantitative paradigm have a frequency of 40% compared to those of the qualitative and mixed paradigms (60%, 34% and 26%, respectively).

On the contrary, it can be seen that items framed in the quantitative paradigm stand out with a frequency of 49% in citations, and items of process innovation, alongside other 14 (fourteen) innovation types (IT) are the most common (21%) Table 1.

It is necessary to mention that the implicit limitation on data collection deriving from the study's methodolo gical framework is that there are journals that do not offer open access. This is a situation that obviously forced leaving numerous scholarly articles belonging to those publications out of the analysis.

Consequently, if this circumstance could have been avoided, the observed trends might have changed, perhaps even markedly. Despite this limitation, the authors consider it is a relatively irrelevant aspect when framing and presenting studies. The authors' desire was to provide a practical and exemplary methodological guide for education and training of junior researchers in academic undergraduate programs, especially for those interested in qualitative research in the field of social sciences, focusing primarily on business administration and related disciplines and careers.

Considering the general purpose of this study, that of proposing a structure for the preparation of a bibliographic portfolio of articles from publication focused on the field of innovation, it is concluded that an appropriate methodology has been obtained that allows structuring the required portfolio of articles from publication in a way that clearly reflects the paradigmatic trends used in recent research, namely quantitative, qualitative and mixed approaches.

In this sense, this work serves as an epistemic reference for undertaking new studies on innovation, especially designed for novice researchers, but equally useful for experienced researchers who want to delve deeper into the subject of innovation.

As for the results, it is relevant to indicate that, although studies of an eminently quantitative nature prevail (40% of the total observed), it is worth noting that studies of a qualitative nature and those of a mixed nature (60%) have the greater weight as a whole (34% and 26% respectively), which shows the importance of the qualitative paradigmatic approach regarding recent studies carried out in the field of innovation. In this way, through the development of future relevant research, using the proposed methodology, comparative results of interest may be derived to monitor research trends in the scope of the object of this study. Likewise, future studies aligned with the proposal of this study may be of interest to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).