A geographic information system (GIS) is a framework for gathering, managing, analyzing and sharing data. Rooted in the
science of geography, GIS integrates many types of data, organizes layers of information and is extremely relevant to
knowledge society (Goodchild, 2018; Viana et al., 2019).
Web mapping services have become used from many stakeholders. With today’ s computing power and visualization
capabilities we must take a knowledge governance approach to build a geospatial infrastructure to make GIS practice friendly
use (Moresi et al., 2020; Pinho & Pinho, 2014; Pinho et al., 2019). The potential benefits for the society of citizens engagement
in the use of geoportals are: improve information access, smart decision-making and e-participation (Haklay et al., 2008; Ricker
et al., 2020).
The purpose of this article is to present the intellectual and cognitive structure of the GIS theme. To achieve this goal, a
bibliographic analysis was made based on information retrieval from Wos database.