A review of current trends and future directions in reverse logistics research

Reverse logistics (RL) studies, in recent times, have gained considerable attention among practitioners and scholars in different geographical regions. This is due to the potential of RL to enhance the economic and environmental performance of firms. Nonetheless, there is a paucity of systematic scientometric studies evaluating all aspects of RL with a direction for future research on the phenomenon. This study attempts to bridge this gap by conducting a scientometric coupled with content analysis of current RL studies. A total of 2191 articles from Scopus database supported by a snowballing approach, from Google scholar, was used to construct science maps. The review unearthed most prolific journals, authorships, article citations, countries, institutions and co-occurrence network of keywords. Besides, a qualitative analysis revealed six RL themes namely: importance, drivers, implementational resources, practices, empirical studies and mathematical modeling. This study serves as an RL reference for both scholars and practitioners. It highlights the status quo and provides pointers for future RL research.