Industrial Ecology and Circular Economy: past, present and future developments. insights from a bibliometric and content analysis

The concept of Circular Economy (CE) has reached such a level of diffusion and relevance to be considered an autonomous scientific field and also a new economic paradigm. As recognized, many of the principles and tools underlying CE are shared with the research field of Industrial Ecology (IE). To investigate the interrelationships between the two, a cross-bibliometric analysis and a subsequent content analysis of the scientific literature was conducted, considering several parameters concerning authors, countries, keywords and typical research methods and tools. Results provide insights on the origin, current state and future development of the two fields.