A Bibliometric Review of Two Decades’ Research on Closed-Loop Supply Chain: 2001-2020

The closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) is generally regarded as an environmentally friendly approach that can help in reducing environmental impacts and achieving sustainable development of society and economics. In recent years, the popularity research of CLSC has been widely concerned by both business and academia practitioners. It is observed that most of the literatures have focused only on a particular journal or field; there is a distinct lack of comprehensive bibliometric review of two decades' research on CLSC. This study contributes in fulfilling this gap. A comprehensive bibliometric analysis was conducted based on 1,155 articles in Web of Science Core Collection Database from 2001 to 2020. In order to track research frontiers and hotspots, visualization software VOSviewer and CiteSpace are used for analysis. Initially, a descriptive analysis was carried out to identify the trends of number of publications, the leading journals, top authors and regions. A thematic cluster analysis was then carried out to identify the research domains. Subsequently, based on the analyses of co-keywords, dominant categories and co-citation, hot issues and research trends are summarized. “game theory”, and “remanufacturing” are emerging research trends for CLSC. “Dual channel”, “quality” and “circular economy” had become hot topics. This review also finds the landmark nodes and pivot nodes in the research of CLSC. Finally, some research gaps are revealed to shed light on future directions.