Bibliometric analysis of sustainability papers: Evidence from Environment, Development and sustainability

This study aims to highlight the current trends in the literature on sustainability by applying a bibliometric review of papers on sustainability published in Environment, Development and Sustainability. Bibliometric analysis is a quantitative approach to bibliographic materials that highlights the core theoretical and empirical research on a specific field. In addition, it allows the classification of previous studies. Previous bibliometric reviewers were limited to sustainability papers in specific industries, while this study considers all papers on sustainability to provide further insights on overall sustainability topics. The analysis was based on keyword cartography analysis, bibliometric authors’ citation analysis, bibliometric papers’ citation analysis, bibliometric references’ co-citation analysis, journals’ co-citation cartography, and qualitative content analysis. A total of 997 articles on sustainability were reviewed. Bibliometric analysis was performed using VOSviewer and content analysis was performed using WordStat. Six major clusters were identified: environmental sustainability, sustainable development, urban sustainability, ecological footprint, environment, and climate change. In addition, the results reveal that Environment, Development and Sustainability has increasingly experienced important growth in research papers and citations, reflecting its significant contribution to the sustainability research field. In addition, this study presents recommendations for future research opportunities in the field of sustainability. The findings of this study have implications for sustainability research, such as the assessment of environmental and social sustainability in multinational institutional contexts and across industries as well as the examination of the impact of environmental and social sustainability on different corporate aspects and decisions. This study is the only one to review the key topics on which papers published in Environment, Development and Sustainability are focused and can be largely used for sustainability practices. This study provides an overview of how the literature on sustainability has developed, as well as a summary of the most productive authors, along with countries, organizations, and journal sources. This offers an opportunity for future research to focus on this topic.