A systematic scientometric review of sustainable rail freight transportation

The negative externalities of freight transport have caught the attention of scholars and practitioners to study sustainable freight transportation. Past studies have reviewed sustainable logistics from varying perspectives, but the rail mode-specific sustainable logistics has not been thoroughly reviewed. This sets the motivation to review existing research on sustainable rail freight transportation (SRFT). A science mapping approach was used to develop and visualize bibliographic networks of 378 articles published between 2001 and 2022 and indexed in the Scopus database. Four scientometric analysis techniques, namely journal co-citations; countries/organizations/authors co-authorship; document co-citations; and keywords co-occurrence, were employed in the VOSviewer software to reveal conceptual structure, social structure, and influential themes of the SRFT domain. Based on the results, the SRFT knowledge was categorized into six thematic branches (31 sub-branches), namely intermodal transportation for decarbonization; green policies, risk, and energy assessment research; savings in externalities for a sustainable future; decision-making with environmental and economic considerations; case studies and applications in SRFT research; and technological advancements towards sustainability. Finally, future research directions were proposed in the form of research questions. This systematic literature review will facilitate the researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to understand the status quo, existing research gaps, and emerging research topics in the SRFT research domain. This study is restricted to research articles and review articles published in English and indexed in the Scopus database.