Research trends in Belt and Road Initiative studies on logistics, supply chains, and transportation sector

Abstract

Since its inception in 2013, China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has become a focal issue in international transportation and global logistics because infrastructure development and economic and transport corridors have been influencing connectivity among countries along the Belt and Road. This paper aims to conduct a literature review on logistics, supply chains, and transport (LST) field in the context of the BRI since 2013. The papers for the literature review were collected from SCI/SSCI/SCIE and Chinese SSCI journals. This paper applies Text Mining to draw key research topics and research networks of the literature and then makes a comparative study between selected 190 English and 198 Chinese papers published in 2013-2020. This paper also investigates and compares the methods applied to those papers. The findings help researchers understand research trends in the LST field and contribute to highlighting research insights for further studies in the LST field.

Strategic locations for logistics distribution centers along the Belt and Road: Explorative analysis and research agenda

“…Maritime transport along the New MSR and rail transport along the SREB are having an impact on multimodal transportation, global logistics and supply chain management (Lee et al, 2020d). The infrastructural and operational development of economic and transport corridors in light of the BRI promotes connectivity and accessibility along the B&R (Figure A1) and, therefore, paves the way for the emergence of (new) global LDCs.…”

“…Since its inception in 2013, China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has gained wide attention from several academic disciplines such as international relations, political science, transportation, logistics, and supply chain management. More than 700 journal papers 1 written in English in the fields of transportation, logistics, and supply chains have been published over the last eight years specifically dealing with the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road (MSR) and Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) in the BRI, including some literature review papers (e.g., Lee et al, 2018a;Lee et al, 2020d;Wang et al, 2020bWang et al, , 2020c and special issues of international journals (e.g., Lee et al, 2016;Lee et al, 2018b;Cullinane et al, 2018;Lam et al, 2018;Chhetri et al, 2020;Lee et al, 2020a;Lee et al, 2020b;Lee et al, 2020c). The literature review papers applied a systematic approach with text mining techniques to reveal key topics and keywords in the context of the BRI in a visual way.…”

“…The literature review papers applied a systematic approach with text mining techniques to reveal key topics and keywords in the context of the BRI in a visual way. Lee et al (2020d) and Wang et al (2020b) summarized research trends in transportation, logistics, and supply chains under the BRI. In particular, Lee et al (2018a) and Lee et al (2020d) highlighted research methods applied for such BRI studies.…”

“…Lee et al (2020d) and Wang et al (2020b) summarized research trends in transportation, logistics, and supply chains under the BRI. In particular, Lee et al (2018a) and Lee et al (2020d) highlighted research methods applied for such BRI studies. Thürer et al (2020) highlighted a research agenda from the viewpoint of global supply chain management by a comprehensive BRI literature review.…”

Editorial

“…Since China implemented the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, approximately 190 academic papers in the field of global supply chains, international logistics and transportation field in association with the BRI have been published in more than 70 SSCI/SCI/SCIE indexed journals in the period of 2013–2020 (Lee et al , 2020). The research trends in the above field are broadly categorized into four groups: (1) multimodal transportation in association with the Maritime Silk Road, (2) railway transportation in association with sustainability, supply chain management and cross-border issues, (3) the contribution of infrastructure to international trade and regional economy and (4) structural change in energy supply chain development in association with carbon emission.…”