A Bibliometric Analysis of Green Supply Chain Management Based on the Web of Science (WOS) Platform

Abstract

To analyse the research progress and frontier dynamics of green supply chain management, this paper uses Web of Science’s citation database to search and filter related documents from 2007–2018. A total of 1391 articles were obtained. On this basis, a bibliometric analysis method was utilized to study the literature characteristics and research hotspots of green supply chain management research. Our results show the following: (1) The current amount of published literature on the field of green supply chain management is exponentially increasing. Research on green supply chain management tended to develop after 2013. (2) The current research on green supply chain management has not formed a core author group and among the literatures on green supply chain management, only a few authors reported some influential literatures. (3) It can be seen from the comprehensive average citation frequency and the number of publications that Hong Kong Polytechnic University, University of Southern Denmark and others have a strong research capability and a large field influence in the field of green supply chain management research. (4) There are 13 core journals publishing the research of green supply chain management, covering 10 fields including engineering, mathematics and social issues. (5) At present, the research hotspots of green supply chain management mainly include the following: Green production and innovation, green supply chain management theory and method, and sustainable supply chain environment and performance. Finally, this paper analyses the shortcomings of previous research and proposes a future direction for research development.