Environmental metrics in green supply chain management: a bibliometric review of trends, gaps and research directions

This article reviews GSC-related research worldwide from 2009 to 2024, shedding light on the development path of GSCM and dominant themes as well as trends in environmental performance evaluations. Unlike earlier bibliometric studies and systematic reviews, this research focuses on evolution of data-driven approaches applied to environmental metrics in GSC research with international collaboration. This study employs bibliometric approaches based on VOSviewer and R Software to conduct a cross-journal analysis from 197 articles in 36 journals to visualise citation patterns, global collaboration networks, and keyword clusters, leading to the establishment of main themes and trends in GSC-related environmental research. A deceleration in publication growth is observed for India, while Iran and China remain among the leading contributors to green supply chain research during the study period. New trends are the integration of sustainability analytics with big data and more powerful environmental performance management. Furthermore, 26.38% of the publications were from international cooperation, which illustrates the interdisciplinary characteristics of the GSC studies. This study adds to the literature by (1) providing methodological implications, (2) examining environmental metrics and (3) analysing thematic and collaborative patterns to guide scholars and practitioners in developing sustainable supply chain management.