Highly cited articles in life cycle assessment research in 21st century: a systematic and visualised analysis

This paper aims to examine the trends and various aspects of life cycle assessment (LCA) research using bibliometric analysis to gain a deeper perspective on the various avenues of LCA research. Using the Scopus database, the relationship between countries, journals, authors, and keywords was analysed, and the results were visualised using the VOSviewer software. According to the findings, during this time frame, 1,669 highly cited papers were published in 160 journals focusing on LCA with the highest output coming from the Journal of Cleaner Production. 4,155 authors from a variety of countries have contributed to the subject at hand. The top five contributing countries have been highlighted in this paper among which the USA served as the main research hub. Additionally, the co-occurrence network of keywords identifies four focal points for LCA research, highlighting the topics that have garnered the most attention in recent years and those that will continue to grow rapidly in the future.