Bibliometric Study Maps Carbon Accounting Research Evolution

A comprehensive bibliometric analysis published in Discover Environment provides a detailed structural map of the carbon accounting and disclosure research field. By leveraging advanced visualization tools such as Biblioshiny and VOSviewer, the authors identify prominent publication trends, leading authors, and the thematic trajectories that have shaped this emerging interdisciplinary domain. The research addresses a significant gap in the literature, where existing studies have remained fragmented and failed to provide a consolidated understanding of how carbon accounting has evolved as a distinct field of inquiry.

The motivation for this study stems from the intensifying implications of climate change, which have brought carbon accounting to the forefront of policy and scholarly debate. Carbon accounting serves as a numerical tool for estimating, disclosing, and validating carbon emissions and removals, allowing governments, businesses, and financial markets to map corporate operations onto global climate goals. Despite the growing body of literature, the field has developed in parallel streams rather than as a coherent body of knowledge. This fragmentation constrains the emergence of unified theoretical perspectives capable of explaining how carbon accounting functions within broader systems of climate governance and corporate accountability.

To achieve its objectives, the research team adopted a structured methodological approach involving the retrieval of relevant documents from the Scopus database. A broad Boolean search strategy was executed in July 2025, targeting English-language articles, book chapters, and conference papers classified within social sciences, business, and economics. The initial search yielded 793 documents, from which 64 were excluded based on criteria such as non-scholarly content, retracted papers, and review articles. An additional 14 non-English documents were removed to ensure consistency in textual interpretation, resulting in a final dataset of 715 publications for analysis.

The analysis revealed a consistent increase in scholarly output over time, with an annual growth rate of 12.88%. The years between 1992 and 2010 saw an average of only 1.55 documents per year, reflecting a sluggish start to the field. However, since 2011, there has been a remarkable shift in publication numbers, with the largest count recorded in 2024. This surge underscores the growing importance of carbon accounting issues, driven by the global movement to mitigate climate change impacts. It is important to note that the 2025 data cover only part of the year, so the apparent decline in that year should be interpreted with caution rather than as evidence of diminishing research interest.

China emerged as the highest contributing nation in the field, leading the list by a wide margin in both full and fractional publication counts. This dominance is consistent with China’s recent policy focus on carbon neutrality and its active role in global climate negotiations. Other countries with high output include Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom, which may reflect robust academic networks and institutional support for research dissemination. The country collaboration network, however, highlights a stark lack of international collaboration, with regional collaborations appearing largely insular and distinct separations between North American, Far Eastern, and European research communities.

In terms of publication sources, the Journal of Cleaner Production holds the leading position with 61 publications, followed by Sustainability (Switzerland) with 46 publications. The International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy ranks third with 26 documents. These journals demonstrate strong bibliometric performance and visibility within the field, serving as established outlets for peer-reviewed research. The application of Bradford’s Law to the dataset indicated a high concentration of literature in 13 core sources, although the fit was interpreted as partial rather than exact due to a statistically significant deviation from the ideal geometric progression.

Professor Tang Q of Western Sydney University was identified as the most productive author in the field, with 13 publications and 9,199 total citations. His work is instrumental in shaping researchers’ understanding of the multifaceted features of carbon accounting. Luo L from Macquarie University ranks second with 10 publications, while Li Y from Zhejiang University is the third most relevant author with 9 documents. The most cited article in the dataset is “Firm-Value Effects of Carbon Emissions and Carbon Disclosures” by Matsumura et al., published in The Accounting Review in 2014, which has accumulated 992 citations. This study revealed an inverse relationship between carbon emissions and firm value, noting that firms that voluntarily disclose carbon emissions outperform those that do not.

Thematic mapping and co-occurrence analysis highlighted six dominant research clusters that define the intellectual structure of the field. The first cluster focuses on corporate environmental disclosure and performance, examining how companies report their carbon performance and how this affects financial outcomes. The second cluster involves life cycle and emission analysis, emphasizing quantitative methods to assess environmental impacts through life cycle assessment and greenhouse gas accounting. The third cluster addresses climate policy and forest carbon sequestration, highlighting the role of nature-based solutions and international agreements like the Kyoto Protocol in regulating carbon storage.

The fourth cluster explores technological and emerging themes in carbon management, with a particular focus on blockchain technology for carbon tracking and supply chain transparency. This cluster is noted for its smaller size and lower density, indicating that technological applications in carbon accounting remain emergent and fragmented. The fifth cluster covers accounting and methodological approaches, emphasizing the methodological foundation of the field through input-output analysis and emission inventories. The final cluster represents carbon disclosure, sustainability, and regional empirical synthesis, reflecting a concentration of quantitative, firm-level studies examining the determinants and consequences of carbon-related information disclosure.

A cross-cluster perspective reveals a notable fragmentation in the field, with technical approaches to carbon measurement and corporate disclosure practices evolving largely in parallel. This suggests that while firms increasingly disclose carbon-related information, the underlying measurement systems are not fully embedded in financial and strategic decision-making processes. The study also identified a broader theoretical divide, with technical research streams emphasizing emissions quantification and disclosure-oriented studies focusing on legitimacy and stakeholder communication. Bridging this gap represents a critical direction for advancing carbon accounting as both a technical and managerial discipline.

The thematic evolution of the field shows a shift from core environmental concerns in the 1992–2017 period toward more advanced issues revolving around governance, technology, and corporate accountability in recent years. The 2018–2022 period represents a transitional phase where the network became more diversified, indicating the emergence of multiple interacting thematic clusters. The 2023–2024 and 2025 periods reflect a mature and transformation-oriented knowledge structure, characterized by highly interdisciplinary and fragmented clusters. Themes such as ESG assurance, AI-driven sustainability analytics, and blockchain-enabled carbon tracking indicate a shift toward digital institutionalism and data-driven sustainability governance frameworks.

The study acknowledges several limitations, including its reliance exclusively on bibliographic metadata from the Scopus database, which may exclude articles indexed in other databases such as Web of Science. The analysis does not consider the full content of the articles, meaning that the keyword co-occurrence and thematic positioning indicate structural relationships but do not independently demonstrate causal developments or practical effectiveness. Furthermore, the interpretation of individual clusters is limited to identifying their thematic composition based on keyword patterns and does not assert the presence of specific document types unless demonstrably present in the eligible corpus. These limitations suggest that the findings should be interpreted as a structural mapping of the field rather than as evidence of causal mechanisms or predictive pathways.

Future research directions proposed by the authors include longitudinal and causal investigations to establish definitive links between carbon information disclosure and actual carbon performance. Cross-national comparative studies are also needed to understand how varying institutional and regulatory contexts shape disclosure practices. Additionally, scholars should broaden outcome variables beyond market-based metrics to include tangible environmental impacts and integrate stakeholder and behavioral theories to explain variations in disclosure practices. The study emphasizes the need for more cross-country collaborative research networks to improve contextual diversity and the global relevance of carbon accounting research.

Subject of Research: Bibliometric mapping of carbon accounting and disclosure research trends and thematic clusters

Article Title: Mapping the evolution of carbon accounting and disclosure research through bibliometric analysis

Article References: Kebede, T. N., Woldeamanuel, A. G., & Kabtiymer, T. S. (2026). Mapping the evolution of carbon accounting and disclosure research through bibliometric analysis. Discover Environment, 4(1), Article 638. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44274-026-01190-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44274-026-01190-5

Keywords: carbon accounting, bibliometric analysis, sustainability, climate policy, corporate disclosure, research trends, Scopus, VOSviewer, environmental reporting, knowledge mapping, Mapping, evolution