A Systematic Bibliometric Analysis of Research on Hazardous Solid Waste Management

The continuous global development in multiple sectors and rapid urbanization have increased hazardous solid waste production rates. Numerous research studies have been conducted over the years to examine and identify scientific and effective management schemes that can significantly reduce this type of waste, creating a need for additional literature analysis to provide further insight into this area. This paper uses bibliometric analysis to collect and analyze the publications on hazardous solid waste management (HSWM) from 1973 to 2021. The web-based bibliometric analysis tool Biblioshiny was used to analyze the bibliometric information of 1585 publications retrieved from Scopus. The analysis included general characteristics of the research, the contribution of the different research constituents (authors, countries, institutions, and publications) and their social structure, and the authors’ keywords analysis. The results show that 1585 articles were published between 1974 and 2021 in 422 scientific journals covering many subject areas. The contributions to the current research were mainly from developed countries, as they are among the top hazardous solid waste generators. The authors’ keyword analysis showed a significant focus on recycling to manage such waste and minimize the reliance on landfills. The findings of this study provide researchers with an understanding of the current research works and identify the most prolific research constituents, which might prove helpful to scholars seeking collaboration opportunities or simply looking for a starting point in this research field. Additionally, the results would provide practitioners and governments with an evaluation of the relative performance for equitable decision-making.