The following are the review objectives for the study:

1) To obtain an overview of currently available scientific literature on GSCM.

2) To analyse contributions made in the research field based on authorship, institutions, predominant journals, citations and geographical area.

3) To identify influential authors by citation scores and their network of collaborations with other authors.

4) To conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the evolution and development of the important themes in GSCM to establish clusters.

5) To highlight emerging themes and concepts within the research field as a basis for future research direction.

The following are questions for the study.

1) What is the volume of scientific publications on GSCM within the study period?

2) Who are the most influential authors in the research field?

3) What journals published the most articles in the research field?

4) What are the most cited documents in the research field?

5) Which countries contribute the most to the research field in terms of publications?

6) What are the predominant research themes in GSCM?

7) What clusters can be identified by important thematic areas?

8) What are the emerging concepts and themes within the research field?

The term green supply chain refers to the idea of integrating sustainable environmental processes into the traditional supply chain (Junaid et al., 2022) . Green supply chain is a comprehensive concept which encompasses the different stages in the production chain (Khan, 2018) . Figure 1 below is a simple model which explains these stages.

The process of manufacturing products starts with purchasing raw materials. Green purchasing refers to the activity of purchasing raw materials which can be recycled after use (Khan et al., 2022) . Firms endeavour to avoid purchasing raw materials that have adverse effects on plant and animal life. In most cases, eco-friendly raw materials are preferred (Rajaeifar et al., 2022) . The environmental concerns being raised globally puts industry professionals on the urge to consider the environmental impacts of their operations. This includes the types

of raw materials they source to feed their production processes. One critical measure of an effective green purchasing approach is the measure of the amount of waste generated in the course of the production process (Mohammed et al., 2022) . Green purchasing has the potential of reducing waste and allowing for effective recycling/reuse whilst reducing the cost of production (Sugandini et al., 2020) .

Green manufacturing has a positive significant impact on social, economic and environmental performance (Afum et al., 2020) . The main purpose of green manufacturing is to mitigate adverse environmental effects by adopting socially and environmentally accountable manufacturing practices that ensure the profitability of the firm. This offers a competitive advantage in the industry and also yields quality and cheaper products for consumers. Green manufacturing ensures an efficient process which improves on the operational, financial and environmental dimensions. Diana et al. (2017) highlighted the central role of manufacturing in the sustainable management of operations. Manufacturing forms the core of the process that yields the finished products for distribution to end users.

Green distribution encompasses all measures taken to ensure that the final product gets to the consumer and becomes available for use with minimum wastage or environmental destruction. Green marketing strategy is the company’s strategic orientation that leads to green marketing of the finished products (Papadas et al., 2017) . The marketing strategy of the company in distribution determines the reach and eventually, the customer base. Green distribution could increase the profitability of the firm whiles protecting the interest of the environment.

Green reverse logistics practices enable firms to improve their public corporate image and reduce wastage (Khan et al., 2018) . The practice of reverse logistics comprising reuse, remanufacturing, recycling, rebranding and product regeneration to produce new and usable finished products (Govindan et al., 2015) . This ensures maximum use of materials and end-products of the production chain. Reverse logistics reduce the expenses on raw materials as well as the negative impact of environmental pollution resulting from the production chain. This can be achieved by sourcing eco-friendly and reusable raw materials as part of the green supply chain mechanism.

Green technology and innovation refer to the development and application of sustainable practices in the production chain to ensure efficient production whiles promoting long-term environmental sustainability. This includes the promotion of new mechanisms to reduce pollution throughout the product life cycle (Mylan, 2015) . The concept of green technology is considered an effective strategy that can foster a sustainable environment and development (Danish & Ulucak, 2020) . Green Technology and the associated practices mitigate the damage to the environment and spur positive impacts in sectors such as energy and health (Zhu & Ye, 2018) . Green Technology and innovation strategies are environmentally friendly and encompass energy efficiency, health and safety concerns, recycling, as well as the promotion of renewable resources (Awan, 2019) . Innovation could be technologically or non-technologically motivated by economic or environmental considerations such as cost reduction, pollution control, waste management or the promotion of eco-friendly materials (Miranda et al., 2021) .

GSCM emerged as a concept to mitigate the adverse environmental impacts resulting from the production chain. Researchers and industry players have shown interest in GSCM because of its impact on both corporate performance and the built environment. This review adopts the triple bottom line theory from existing literature which categorised the impacts under environmental, economic and social impacts (Qin, 2019) .

Table 1 below shows the main information obtained from the analysis in VOSviewer. The review used literature publications from 2017 to 2022 for the analysis. A total of 652 documents were sourced from 279 sources (Journals, Books, etc.). The annual growth rate of publications in the study area was 18.26%, an indication of the infancy of publications in the study area since the rate of publication within the period was low.

The annual publications in Figure 3 revealed the development in the research field over the study period. Since 2017, there has been a gradual increase in publications on the topic per year, with most in 2022. This is a representation of the evolution of the study area publications over the period under consideration. There were 67 articles published on the topic in 2017. This number increased to 108 in 2019 reaching 155 in 2022. Researchers are interested in the study area and emerging concepts which accounts for the steady increase in publications.

To understand the trend of publications by countries, Table 2 shows the results of country production over time. Most documents were recorded from China and Brazil.

The most relevant sources discovered from the analysis in biblioshiny are as shown in Table 3 below. Sustainability Switzerland is the most relevant source of literature in the study area with 64 articles. This is closely followed by the Journal of cleaner production with 56 articles. The least relevant source at the bottom of the table with 4 articles is corporate social responsibility and environmental management.

Table 4 below shows the top 20 results of the most impactful authors. On the top is Khan Sar with an h-index of 5 and 244 total citations. Kumnar V appears as the next impactful author with h-index of 5 and 170 total citations. At the bottom of the table is Green KW, h-index 3 with 146 citations. The table shows that on average, the authors have high h-index which shows that their output in the study area contributes to understanding the emerging concepts.

From the results in Table 5, most documents were affiliated with Formerly Indian Institute of Food Processing Technology—IIFPT, Human Agricultural University, and Universiti Malaysia Terengganu with 17, 16 and 14 articles respectively. Less than 10 documents each were affiliated with Nanjing Institute of Environmental Sciences and Sant’anna School of Advanced Studies.

Table 6 below shows the most frequent words used in the existing literature. The most frequently used keywords and phrases among others were sustainable development, environmental management sustainability, supply chain management, environmental impact, environmental technology, environmental economics, environmental sustainability, environmental protection etc. The focus on environment, sustainability and technology is a visible research area of interest and researchers understand the future implications and are readily participating in expanding their work in this field.

The results of the co-authorship analysis are shown in Figure 4. Co-authorship illustrates the number of publications of the authors and how they are interconnected. The unit of analysis was a minimum of 2 authors using the full counting

method. Out of 1959 authors for 652 articles taken from scopus from 2017 to 2022, a minimum number of documents of an author were set at 20 as a threshold which qualified 82 authors to meet the threshold out of 199.

To understand how authors from different countries are collaborating, the co-authorship by country map shows the biggest network. With the minimum number of documents and citations set at 2, the biggest network had 59 out of 63 (Figure 5).

The keyword co-occurrence indicates how keywords in the study area are used by the authors. With a minimum occurrence set at 10, 91 out of 3164 keywords form the biggest network. This map gives an overview of the trend in keywords and the current hot areas of interest to researchers. The rectangle

covering the green network of balls shows the current keywords being used. The middle and right rectangles show words that have been used over the period with a connection to the currently most used keywords. This gives a direction for future researchers to be guided in selecting topics with the currently researched keywords to produce relevant publications of interest (Figure 6).

Two documents are bibliographically coupled if they both cite one or more documents in the same subject of study. Figure 7 shows the bibliographical coupling of documents with the minimum citations per document set at 25 of which 131 out of 652 met the criteria.

The bibliographic coupling (sources) has 82 as the biggest connections out of 279 with the minimum number of documents and citations set to 2. Figures 8-12 are maps of the bibliographic coupling which shows the various networks that met the stated criteria.

Figure 13 below shows topical areas that have evolved over the period from 2017 to 2022. This is vital information for potential researchers to be able to select current topics in their publications. Themes in the study area have evolved into sustainability, sustainable development and waste management which are potential areas for future research.

Figure 14 below shows the emerging, niche, basic motor themes of current trends in the study area. More researchers are concentrating on environmental impact and green technology which have the potential of growth in publications.