State of the art on food waste research: a bibliometrics study from 1997 to 2014

• Published in: Journal of cleaner production Vol. 140; pp. 840 - 846
• Main Authors: Chen, Haibin, Jiang, Wei, Yang, Yu, Yang, Yan, Man, Xin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.01.2017
• Subjects: bibliometric analysis; Bibliometrics; Citation score; developed countries; Food waste; renewable energy sources; Trend analysis; Web of science; Food waste; Web of science; Bibliometrics; Citation score; Trend analysis
• ISSN: 0959-6526; 1879-1786
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.11.085

The interest for food waste (FW) in the scientific community has been growing consistently in the most recent years. This is reflected by the number of publications (journal articles and proceedings papers) which can be accessed in the Web of Science (WoS) database. However, lacking of systematic, chronological and synthesizing studies indicating how this field has evolved over time. The main objective of this paper is to consolidate the state of the art of research on FW, based on a bibliometrics study of articles published over the past 18 years. The results are discussed under the following perspectives: chronological distribution, countries, institutions, source titles, subject categories, and author keywords. It is found that the FW research has increased rapidly over past 18 years, most notably in the last 8 years. In total, 2340 research articles were published in 801 journals and in 161 WoS subject categories. The top 7 productive countries were analyzed herein. The predominance of Chinese institutions in terms of article count and a predominance of industrialized countries' institutions in terms of citation score were compared. Finally, based on keywords analysis, it comes to the conclusion that the clean energy, treatment and valorization, and management innovation have attracted extensive attention during the past decade. •A systematic overview of scientific literature dealing with FW is provided by a bibliometric analysis.•The analysis of publication output, distribution of countries, institutions, and subject category are carried out.•The analysis of author keywords helps in drawing the research trends in a special perspective.•Researches on clean energy, LCA, and sustainability tend to be a new research focus in the area of FW.