Half a century of Omega – The International Journal of Management Science: A bibliometric analysis

•A bibliometric review of the first half a century of Omega – the international journal of management science.•Identification of the current trends including most cited papers, most productive authors, institutions, and countries.•A graphical visualization of Omega with VOS viewer software and using bibliographic coupling and co-citation analysis.•A keyword and topical analysis of Omega. Omega – The International Journal of Management Science is a leading international journal in management science and operations research. In 2023, Omega celebrated its 50th anniversary. Motivated by this event, this paper provides an in-depth, critical analysis of Omega's development as a leading academic journal over fifty years. The article visualizes a dynamic and evolving academic landscape through the lens of several bibliometric indicators including bibliographic coupling, keyword co-occurrence, and institutional productivity using the Web of Science Core Collection database. The aim is to identify Omega's leading trends in highly cited papers, authors, universities, countries, journals, keywords and topics. The work also develops a graphical mapping of the bibliographic material using the VOS viewer software. The results indicate that Omega is becoming strongly internationalized, with publications from institutions all over the world. Traditionally, English-speaking countries were leading the journal. But during the last few years, the results have visualized the strong growth of Europe and East Asia, and at a lower level, the rest of the countries of the world. The study not only highlights Omega's past achievements but also points towards its future trajectory, emphasizing the importance of collaboration, diversity, and innovation in maintaining its academic prominence.