Circular economy: barrier and opportunities for SMEs

The circular economy was a concept introduced by the European Union consortium, several national governments, and business people around the world. However, the scientific and research content of the circular economy concept is so superficial and disorganized that it is still a vague collection of ideas separate from several fields of science. The purpose of this study is to measure visual trends in the circular economy. This survey identified keywords related to the circular economy to find and identify related articles in the Scopus database for 1000 articles published from 2000 to 2021. The findings were a visual trend of the increasing number of publications each year, academic affiliation, author, article subject area, keywords, and authorship network. This literature review provides evidence that circular economy thinking attracts academic researchers to formulate relevant policies.