The research aims to identify the role of communities of practice as a tool of knowledge management in research and scientific studies. A systematic review was used as a method to synthesize the existing literature relating to the concept of “community of practice”. It essentially focused on how the concept originally developed and then significantly expanded to provide a useful perspective on learning through the social learning theory proposed by Wenger. Lately, the concept has developed to cover an important aspect associated with organizations, which is organizational learning that enables many organizations to keep pace with developments and overcome obstacles. Besides, the sequence of the concept and its link to other fields was monitored, and its citations in the on-line databases was tracked.