Bibliometric analysis on reverse logistics in the Scopus database: A guide for future studies

Abstract

The reverse logistics (RL) concept has become increasingly popular due to the rising socio-environmental crisis, encompassing climate changes, pollutions and numerous health issues caused by pollutions. Therefore, a bibliometric analysis was conducted on RL to guide future research. This study utilised the VOSviewer software to conduct a bibliometric analysis on RL from 1995 to 2020. Precisely, 1146 papers were retrieved and analysed to identify the most prolific and prominent authors and journals, co-authorship, and co-occurrence. The co-authorship and co-occurrence analysis findings discovered that the United States of America (USA) leads RL-related article publications as the authors and institutions’ cooperation rate is high. ‘Reverse logistics’, ‘remanufacture’, and ‘waste management’ were the most critical keywords in the literature. The bibliometric analysis was undertaken to determine the trends in the RL field. The present research determined that the publication trend continuously increases and is forecasted to increase in the future constantly. The directions for RL and future studies were determined and demonstrated through the analysis.