LAUSR

Abstract This paper was designed as a complement to a previous study to give deeper insights into the characteristics of scientific impact of Resources Conservation and Recycling (RCR) over the past 30 years. Our study brought transparency to the impact trends of RCR, the role of information amounts and contributors, and the evolution of research emphases. The results showed that RCR has become more mainstream with greater influence in the scientific community. International collaboration, inter-institutional collaboration and co-authorship made increasing contributions to the RCR publications, where the collaboration between the USA and China has been the most prominent one. Interestingly, single institution or single country publications were found to obtain more citations than those of inter-institutional and inter-national collaboration, which is nevertheless in line with the fact that many of the former were published earlier than the latter. While the comparative analysis of author keywords and KeyWords Plus revealed the diversity and complexity of research focuses of RCR throughout the study period, RCR has retained its commitment to fueling the sustainability discourses that transcends various disciplinary boundaries. “Recycling” and “management” have long been the research focuses of RCR publications and their references. Overall, this paper presented a systematic review and bibliometric analysis of literature in RCR, which could serve as a reference for the journal editors, authors, reviewers, readers, the publisher, and those who are interested in the state of the art in relevant areas of research.