Circular economy and sustainable development goals: main research trends

Abstract

Purpose: this work aimed to analyze the scientific literature related to the Circular Economy (CE) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to identify its main research trends.Design/methodology/approach: for this purpose, bibliometric and scientometric analysis of the scientific production indexed in the Web of Science database was applied. The scientometric analysis was performed using the CiteSpace software, one of the most influential network software currently.Findings: the results point out trends and challenges for the evolution of sustainability research based on aspects of the 2030 Agenda and the Circular Economy. In particular, trends involve great advances in the number of publications and citations, interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity of research categories, dense research network between countries, author co-citation analysis, network of main keywords, identification of keywords with citation burst and their distribution in timelines, and, finally, classification of studies in thematic clusters.Practical implications: the implication of the study is twofold: it will support the development of sustainability based on the 17 SDGs, with the circular economy being one of the areas in growth and development of solutions for sustainability, and it will help guide the overcoming of thematic gaps.Originality/value: this study is the first one that we are aware of to carry out a scientometric and bibliometric analysis aligning the two themes, CE and SDGs. Thus, we contribute to the literature by unveiling the main trends in the field and identifying research directions, which is particularly useful in new and challenging themes for the academic community and for managers.