Trends in global research on industrial parks: A bibliometric analysis from 1996–2019

Industrial parks have been used to promote the economic development of countries. However, its rapid growth has generated environmental problems related to the depletion of natural resources and pollution. Consequently, the network analysis and the bibliometric analysis applied in this research generated qualitative and quantitative information from a systemic perspective on the thematic and community evolution of research on industrial parks (IP) performed to improve its negative environmental impact and reach sustainability. This study used the Web of Science (WoS) database from 1996 – 2019. The main trends and critical research points were identified in four periods of 6-year each. Social network analysis (SNA) was used to identify the intellectual structure main and the academic collaboration networks established among countries/territories, institutions, and authors. The most productive country in articles is currently China (882), however, when we consider the frequency of articles per million inhabitants, it ranks seventh. The WoS database grouped 63.6 ​% of the articles published in the subjects of “Environmental Sciences & Ecology”, “Engineering”, and “Science & Technology - Other Topics”. Industrial Ecology (IE), Industrial Symbiosis (IS), and Circular Economy (CE) were the author keywords with the highest frequency, indicating that IP research has focused from these perspectives to promote the exchange of byproducts and to evaluate the performance and environmental impact of industrial areas through the use of methodologies such as carbon footprints, emergy analysis, and life cycle analysis (LCA). Finally, some themes were identified and proposed for future research based on analyzing research trends and hot spots from the literature review on industrial parks.