Contribution of Scientific Production to Air Logistics: A Bibliometric Analysis from the 70s to the Present

Abstract

With increased performance expectations based on speed and agility in logistics flow and supply chain processes, air logistics has gained popularity as a research area. Although more and more papers are published each year on this subject, to the best of our knowledge, a comprehensive bibliometric academic publication review has not been presented so far to contribute to the intellectual structure of the literature. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the last 5 decades intellectual basis of air logistics studies that can be evaluated in the field of social sciences. For this purpose, a total of 398 articles have been accessed to be used in the bibliometric analysis of studies published in the literature of air logistics, and these data have been provided from the Core Collection Database of Web of Science (WOS). The research data consists of articles published in English in the WOS database between 1971 and 2019. Books and papers published in all other languages were not included in the research. The Bibliometrix (Biblioshiny) package of the statistical software program R was used for the analysis and visualization of the data. Research findings indicate that air logistics research has increased greatly, especially in the last 10 years. The most productive countries are the United States, China, and Canada, respectively, while the most published journal is the Journal of Air Transport Management, which has continued to increase its number of publications since 1995. Although there are no tear restrictions in this study, the number of publications on air logistics in the field of social sciences is still insufficient.