Humanitarian Logistics

Abstract

The concept of humanitarian logistics is evolving rapidly and gaining popularity in the research community. This research reviews the literature on humanitarian logistics for providing a thorough outlook into the field. In this study, Authors conducted a scientometric analysis of the literature published in 1998–2015 to empirically explore the important areas and key contributors of humanitarian logistics research and providing new outlook towards publication patterns, authorship pattern, major subject areas, research impact, and research productivity. By using scientometric analysis, the research critically evaluates 509 articles published over the past 18 years and identifies some of the major contributing authors, organizations and key research topics related to the field. In the last, the paper examines the validity of Lotka's law to authorship pattern in humanitarian logistics. The result found that the author productivity distribution data in humanitarian logistics do not follow Lotka's law. The findings of the study provide a new outlook on humanitarian logistics research.