3.1.4. Data extraction in the Eligibility Stage

In stage 3 (eligibility), justified full-text article exclusions were performed, where we read the article titles and keywords. For example, the most-cited source document of [35] in smart city literature outlined the divergent roots of smart city development, including the elements of a smart economy, people, governance, mobility, environment, and living, thus indicating the diversity of the various smart city papers in the Google Scholar database.

In answering the research question concerning the identification of the indicators of citizen centricity in smart cities, the scope was further narrowed down to papers involving smart people and governance. Nonetheless, both topics were scarce, with there being more literature on ICT-related urban innovations [80]. The consequent exclusion of papers concerning smart economy, mobility, living, and environment drastically reduced the number of eligible papers to 2350 studies.

Furthermore, the papers involving citizen centricity in smart cities were carefully assessed by reading the abstracts and contents, such as introductions and conclusions. In this regard, the irrelevant abstracts and contents were identified, with the number of papers included in the qualitative synthesis narrowed down to 71 studies.
