Life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA): Comparing outputs for bibliographic coupling and citation links

The life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA) is an important tool that jointly with the environmental and social life-cycle assessment provides relevant insights into studies about sustainability. This is true in the different economic sectors and social dimensions. Nonetheless, the literature shows that there is a field to be explored about this topic through bibliometric analysis. In this framework, this research aims to analyse the different items associated with the bibliographic coupling and citation links. For that, bibliographic data for the topic "life cycle cost* analysis" were considered. From the Web of Science platform, 1642 documents were taken into account in a search carried out on March 14, 2023. The intention is to highlight the top authors, countries, documents, organisations and sources. This study intends also to compare the metrics obtained for the two links and conclude if they are alternatives. In other words, it is important to show if it is indifferent, for this topic, to choose one of these links (bibliographic coupling and citation) to analyse the metrics associated with the respective items. Or if this choice depends on the objectives designed. The main findings highlight the top authors, countries, organisations and sources related to this topic. On the other hand, the results reveal that some metrics are equal for the two links, but only for a part of the observations. In this way, for the total of the observations, despite strong correlations between some metrics, the choice of the link is not indifferent and depends on the aims of the study. This is an important finding, highlighting that the choice of the link for bibliometric analysis is a crucial step to achieve robust conclusions.