Papers on “circular economy”
Research on “circular economy” in the 480 tracked journals: papers per year and category, the journals, institutions and countries publishing it, the keywords studied with it and its most-cited papers. It is not among the most frequent keywords of the last 30 days, so this page has no list of its latest papers. Also as Markdown.
← Top research keywords · Keyword trends
Key findings#
- From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “circular economy” appeared in 1,167 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in operations research (400), economics (338) and management (302).
- 248 of them were published in 2025, against 21 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were O. P. Jindal Global University (11), Parthenope University of Naples (11) and University of Tehran (11).
- The journals publishing most of them were Computers & Industrial Engineering (73), Resources Policy (59) and Ecological Economics (46).
- The most-cited of them is “Circular Economy: The Concept and its Limitations” (Ecological Economics, 2017), with 3,955 citations.
Papers per year#
20172026 (so far)
| Category | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (so far) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Operations Research | 1 | 4 | 12 | 11 | 31 | 54 | 59 | 49 | 113 | 66 |
| Economics | 9 | 16 | 19 | 22 | 35 | 32 | 45 | 62 | 51 | 47 |
| Management | 8 | 2 | 6 | 14 | 22 | 41 | 35 | 41 | 62 | 71 |
| Marketing | 0 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 7 | 6 | 6 | 8 |
| Information Systems | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 5 | 13 |
| AI | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 6 | 3 | 6 | 3 | 4 |
| Finance | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 11 |
| Tourism and Hospitality | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 |
| Higher Education and Research | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Health Economics and Policy | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Accounting | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| All categories | 21 | 25 | 42 | 56 | 93 | 138 | 155 | 166 | 248 | 223 |
Where the papers come from#
| # | Journal | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Computers & Industrial Engineering | 73 |
| 2 | Resources Policy | 59 |
| 3 | Ecological Economics | 46 |
| 4 | Annals of Operations Research | 44 |
| 5 | Technological Forecasting and Social Change | 41 |
| 6 | International Journal of Production Economics | 38 |
| 7 | Journal of Innovation & Knowledge | 36 |
| 8 | Cleaner Logistics and Supply Chain | 32 |
| 9 | Journal of Open Innovation Technology Market and Complexity | 21 |
| 10 | Socio-Economic Planning Sciences | 20 |
| # | Institution | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | O. P. Jindal Global University | 11 |
| 2 | Parthenope University of Naples | 11 |
| 3 | University of Tehran | 11 |
| 4 | NEOMA Business School | 10 |
| 5 | University of Turin | 9 |
| 6 | Azerbaijan State University of Economics | 8 |
| 7 | Politecnico di Milano | 8 |
| 8 | University of Naples Federico II | 8 |
| 9 | University of Salerno | 8 |
| 10 | Hong Kong Polytechnic University | 7 |
| # | Country | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 171 |
| 2 | United Kingdom | 107 |
| 3 | Italy | 105 |
| 4 | India | 78 |
| 5 | United States | 63 |
| 6 | France | 56 |
| 7 | Germany | 51 |
| 8 | Spain | 50 |
| 9 | Australia | 38 |
| 10 | Netherlands | 38 |
| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | recycling | 46 |
| 2 | sustainability | 42 |
| 3 | CO2 emissions | 40 |
| 4 | resource efficiency | 40 |
| 5 | supply chain resilience | 40 |
| 6 | sustainable development | 39 |
| 7 | waste management | 38 |
| 8 | blockchain | 36 |
| 9 | Industry 4.0 | 35 |
Most-cited papers#
Cite this page
Scholar4AI. (2026). Papers on “circular economy”. Journal and Conference Research Rankings. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/circular-economy
@misc{scholar4ai-keywords-circular-economy,
author = {{Scholar4AI}},
title = {Papers on “circular economy”},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/circular-economy}},
urldate = {2026-11-03},
note = {Journal and Conference Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}