Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Almeria, Ctra. De Sacramento, s/n, 04120 Almería, Spain.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2018 Nov 29;15(12):2699. doi: 10.3390/ijerph15122699.
The relevance of circular economy to environmental science has led to a notable increase of research works during the last few years. It is very important to know the evolution of the publications that relate these two concepts, as well as the main areas of knowledge in which these investigations are framed. The purpose is to understand and highlight the state of art of circular economy and the role and relationship of the environment. Bibliometric analysis allows to evaluate developments in knowledge on a specific subject and assesses the scientific influence of researches and sources. This paper analyses the worldwide research dynamics on circular economy in the period from 2006 to 2017. A bibliometric analysis of 743 articles was completed. The most productive journals in this field were Journal of Cleaner Production. The five most productive countries were China, United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, and Germany. Works on the circular economy and environment has considerable potential and it is open to research fields as sustainability or industrial production. The findings of this study could prove useful for studies into environmental circular economy, as they show a global sight of this line of study. Thus, the article represents a contribution to identify the main trends in circular economy research and environment and, from there, propose future research initiatives.
循环经济与环境科学的相关性使得近年来相关研究工作显著增加。了解这两个概念相关出版物的演变以及这些研究所涉及的主要知识领域非常重要。目的是了解和突出循环经济的现状以及环境的作用和关系。文献计量分析可用于评估特定主题的知识发展，并评估研究和来源的科学影响力。本文分析了 2006 年至 2017 年期间全球范围内循环经济的研究动态。完成了对 743 篇文章的文献计量分析。该领域最具影响力的期刊是《清洁生产杂志》。在这个领域最有生产力的五个国家是中国、英国、意大利、荷兰和德国。关于循环经济和环境的研究具有相当大的潜力，它面向可持续性或工业生产等研究领域开放。本研究的结果可能对环境循环经济研究有用，因为它们从全球视角展示了这条研究路线。因此，本文有助于确定循环经济研究和环境的主要趋势，并在此基础上提出未来的研究倡议。
