Mapping the first decade of circular economy research: a bibliometric network analysis

Alnajem, Mohamad; Mostafa, Mohamed M.; ElMelegy, Ahmed R.

doi:10.1080/21681015.2020.1838632

Cited by 74 publications

(84 citation statements)

References 110 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…In coherence with these global performance visions, companies have had to revisit their way of producing, by introducing paradigms such as reverse production [53] or circular economy [52,54], which is defined as "an economic model wherein planning, resourcing, procurement, production, and reprocessing are designed and managed, as both process and output, to maximize ecosystem functioning and human wellbeing" [55]. In this way, a recent bibliographic analysis underlines that the most cited topics in circular economy are still consumption challenges, waste management and sustainability, ethics is an emerging theme in this area [56].…”

Section: General Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Industrial Performance: An Evolution Incorporating Ethics in the Context of Industry 4.0

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article addresses the issue of the industrial performance model and its evolution to cope with the context of Industry 4.0. With its digitalisation, intelligent/autonomous systems and wealth of data, Industry 4.0 offers opportunities that can achieve objectives better. It also presents risks and uncertainties that question the autonomy of the systems, their interaction with humans and the use of available data. The hypothesis put forward in this work is that the efficiency–effectiveness–relevance performance triangle can no longer guarantee long-term performance under these conditions and needs to be associated with an ethical dimension that allows for the risks and uncertainties relating to Industry 4.0 to be considered. Ethics is therefore considered to extend the triangle to a tetrahedron. A brief analysis of current performance management will first show the limits of the current practice in the context of Industry 4.0. The frameworks that could overcome these limits in light of new needs are then recalled and discussed, leading to the choice of ethics, whose main definitions and use in the engineering field are also introduced. The proposed (efficiency–effectiveness–relevance–ethics tetrahedron-based methodology is illustrated through a case study related to an aeronautical supplier, regarding the consequences of the implementation of a MES (Manufacturing Execution System) in terms of product traceability and operator autonomy. The discussion and prospects finally conclude this study.

show abstract

Section: General Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Industrial Performance: An Evolution Incorporating Ethics in the Context of Industry 4.0

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Institutions from group 4 "conservation" and group 5 "public outreach" are the only non-adjacent groups identified and the furthest from the center of the network. This approach seems very useful to assess the interactions among research communities and has been applied to other interdisciplinary fields such as circular economy (Alnajem et al, 2020) and cultural evolution (Youngblood and Lahti, 2018). However, this approach raises the challenge of labeling the resulting groups in a subjective manner.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These findings support the potential advantages of using bibliometric analysis to uncover the intellectual structure and evolution of research themes. Overall, this approach has shown to be effective to analyze the evolution of fields such as climate change (Sharifi et al, 2020), sustainable tourism (Della Corte et al, 2019) and circular economy (Alnajem et al, 2020). One of the limitations of this analysis is that the use of KeyWords Plus excludes the publications indexed by Scopus, which does not provide this metadata.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping Global Research on Ocean Literacy: Implications for Science, Policy, and the Blue Economy

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In recent years, ocean literacy has become a global movement that connects the human dimension to the ocean and intends to be an incentive for positive change in people’s behavior. As multiple initiatives on ocean literacy have arisen, a comprehensive understanding of this topic is required to better engage the broader society. In the present study, we applied a combination of bibliometric analysis and science mapping to a dataset of scientific publications on ocean literacy between 2005 and 2019, obtained from Web of Science and Scopus databases. In order to represent the development of the field, analyze the level of collaborations and uncover its thematic areas, we first used bibliometric analyses to describe the field’s main features, including indicators of growth and research collaboration. We then used science mapping techniques to build collaboration networks among countries and institutions, and to identify research communities. Lastly, we performed co-word analysis to reveal the underlying thematic areas and their evolution. Our results reveal a slow-growing number of publications and a promising trend for collaboration among authors, countries and institutions. Education and science were identified as the two major thematic areas on ocean literacy showing that, over time, issues related to these themes have gained more attention among researchers. These findings confirm that ocean literacy is gaining more acknowledgment within the scientific community but still faces considerable limitations to its dissemination in sectors like the blue economy and in regions such as Latin America and Africa. Promoting cross-institutional and cross-disciplinary cooperation among research institutions, marine education networks and the industry is critical to support this purposeful movement and represents an urgent challenge.

show abstract

“…Similar reviews of circular economy research have been performed before, using different methods, such as bibliographic analysis, cluster analysis, network analysis, etc. [17][18][19][20]. The novelty of our research is that it is a comprehensive national level study, which reviews all researches done in Finland during the selected period, including also applied project.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Current Status of Circular Economy Research in Finland

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Circular economy has emerged as a sustainable alternative to the traditional, linear, extract-produce-use-dump economy. The scientific society, practitioners, policymakers, and business sectors are all actively taking part in driving the transition toward circular economy in their own sectors. Every sector is striving to address the environmental issues of their own area, and to find solutions to the problem of resource scarcity. However, there is a lack of comprehensive studies on the general status of circular economy research and applied projects. Finland aims to be a global pioneer in this field, which is why there is a tremendous boost in research in various fields of sustainable materials management. Therefore, there is a need to have a better perspective of the research society’s efforts to accelerate the transition to circular economy. The objective of this paper is to review scientific research and practices of circular economy transition in Finland, in order to categorize and analyze them. The paper aims to give an insight into the current status and provide a comprehensive understanding of the trend changes during the past 20 years. The analysis shows that there is growing attention to circular economy in many research fields, researchers and practitioners in all fields have responded to the need of the society. However, the recycling-based ‘end-of-pipe’ interpretation of circular economy is still more dominant than developing and implementing strategies for circular product design, dematerializing society, and developing service-based business models. It is important to bear in mind that circular economy is about much more than improved resource flows and waste management practices. Achieving a circular economy needs the engagement of the society, it needs invention and innovation and it also requires the creation of new technologies, products, services, and business models. This study gives a comprehensive perspective at the national level and addresses the key actions and sectors which require more investment and attention from the scientific community to boost the transition toward circular economy. There are some limitation in this study derived from the method of data collection and selection of databases. Due to this, there may be valuable works that were not published, or only in the Finnish language and were, therefore, not identified in this study.

show abstract

Mapping the first decade of circular economy research: a bibliometric network analysis

Cited by 74 publications

References 110 publications

Industrial Performance: An Evolution Incorporating Ethics in the Context of Industry 4.0

Industrial Performance: An Evolution Incorporating Ethics in the Context of Industry 4.0

Mapping Global Research on Ocean Literacy: Implications for Science, Policy, and the Blue Economy

Current Status of Circular Economy Research in Finland

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About