County development and sustainability in China: a systematic scoping of the literature

Despite the importance of research and innovation in facilitating sustainable county development in China, little evidence is available concerning the output and characteristics of that research. This scoping review assesses key features or characteristics of the research output, the extent to which researchers engage with concepts of sustainability and the potential impact of the research. Publications were identified and classified using a process consistent with Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA). The R programming packages igraph and wordcloud respectively were used to analyse and graphically depict the strength of authorship networks and keyword frequency. Findings revealed that this field of research is an evolving one with a widely-dispersed network of researchers increasingly using new keywords. The implications of the review findings for improving the value and impact of sustainable county development research are explored.