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JOItmCJournal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity
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22 November 2020

Scientific Literature Analysis on Sustainability with the Implication of Open Innovation

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Faculty of Economic and Administrative Sciences, Universidad de Medellin, Medellin 050026, Colombia
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J. Open Innov. Technol. Mark. Complex.2020, 6(4), 162;https://doi.org/10.3390/joitmc6040162
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Abstract

Studies related to sustainability have been performed extensively around the world to evaluate the environmental, economic, and social impact of practices that meet the current and future needs of society. Based on the Scopus database, this study presents a bibliometric analysis for the long, medium, and short term to represent the characteristics of publications related to sustainability, identify research trends and thematic areas with a promising future in research. The analysis covers the following topics: general statistical description, most addressed thematic areas in sustainability, the geographical distribution of sustainability publications, and most influential and cited journals, authors, and articles. The results show sustainability prevails in areas like Engineering, Energy, Environmental Science, and Business, Management, and Accounting, and the publication rate in this field has increased exponentially in the last 10 years. This study also shows that the most productive journals in sustainability research are Sustainability Switzerland and Journal of Cleaner Production, focusing on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary topics. Likewise, the critical issues of sustainability research are related to sustainable development, humans, environmental sustainability, climate change, decision-making, and environmental impact. As sustainability with open innovation represents a topic with an increasing number of publications, future research can be oriented toward this topic.

1. Introduction

At the end of the 1960s, representatives of the Club of Rome argued that infinite economic growth with finite resources was impossible [1]. They informed the world about the risks of following the rising trends in industrial, population, and consumption terms since in the span of 100 years the planet would reach its limits, for which it would be necessary to establish limits to growth, otherwise, an environmental catastrophe of planetary dimensions would occur [2]. In this way, it is comprehended that the relationship between economic growth and the environment represents the origin of the sustainable development debate [3].
Although some conceptualizations about sustainable development emerged 20 years after the 1972 Stockholm Summit, it was only until the Bruntland report that it gained relevance in international politics, emerging the definition of sustainable development as one that guarantees the needs of the present without compromising the possibilities of the future generations to meet their own needs [4]. However, this conceptualization has received various criticisms, because it completely relies on technology as a means to overcome environmental problems, dismissing other aspects such as the power of agreements between the parties involved in the problem [2], and in this sense, the Bruntland Report went from limits to growth toward growth limits [5]. Another criticism of this concept is the ambivalence that can generate multiple interpretations since it is not clearly defined what must be sustained and what the present and future needs are [6]. Due to this, new conceptualizations have appeared to delimit the field of study of sustainable development, to the point of exceeding one hundred definitions [7].
In this regard, the concepts of sustainable development and sustainability have given rise to interesting debates [8]. For some authors, sustainable development remains the priority because it represents one of the many development theories [9], while in sustainability the priority is the environment [10]. For other authors, these two concepts may be interchangeable because they pursue the same purposes [11]. However, for authors like Shaker [12], sustainability is the goal and sustainable development is the process to achieve that goal, and in this work, sustainability is understood under the latter concept. Therefore, this study presents a bibliometric review using the term sustainability as a search criterion, being sustainable development one of the multiple components constituting this topic.
Consequently, sustainability can be understood as the result of a minimum performance of the environmental (ecological, natural), economic (business), and social (society) dimensions [13]. Likewise, sustainability is the result of a set of practices that guarantee the use of supplies that does not imply the depletion of resources, does not deteriorate the environment, meets the current and future needs of the society, and maximizes the net benefit of the society when considering all the costs and benefits of these practices [14,15]. On the other hand, sustainability depends on a set of rules established by different agents and the government, which must be congruent with the conditions, attributes, local resource systems, and users [16]; and as such, sustainability must be a hallmark of any future infrastructure [17].
In a business context, various tools have been developed aiming to assess corporate sustainability and most of them are linked to international standards like the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the Down Jones Sustainability (DJSI) [18], although some local methodologies can include internal variables of the company, the environment and the relationship with the government [8]. In recent years, some proposals have emerged from addressing sustainability from open innovation, which implies the dynamic interaction of companies with external actors like customers, users, suppliers, universities, research and development centers, competitors, government agencies, neighboring communities, and society [19]. This approach requires a two-way interaction from the company, inside-outside and outside-inside interactions [20], which is more efficient than a one-way interaction to achieve the economic, social, and environmental sustainability goals in companies [21]. Therefore, the subject of sustainability with open innovation requires the articulation of sustainability models [22], external stakeholders [19], two-way interactions [20], the macro and micro dynamics of open innovation [23], among others.
Moreover, the concept of sustainability has transcended the environmental problem, being understood nowadays as a multidimensional phenomenon resulting from development processes involving economic, social, institutional, and environmental problems affecting sectors and citizens of all countries [24]. Currently, concerns about achieving a more sustainable world were embodied in the 17 goals of the 2030 agenda, called Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), involving both the interests of developed and undeveloped countries. This agenda exceeds the purposes of previous International Summits, where environmental issues represent the prime concern for developed countries, while the least developed countries dealt with development issues since their most pressing problems were related to poverty and hunger [25].
The achievement of the SDGs requires the commitment not only of governments but also of companies, non-governmental organizations, organizations that make up territories and include those researchers who address the scope of sustainability in recent years, since sustainability remains a multidimensional topic involving issues like poverty, hunger, health, education, employment, the reduction of inequalities, climate change, among others. Therefore, these issues require interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary solutions, requiring reviewing the changes presented in the field of sustainability in the last 10 (long term), 5 (medium term), and 2 (short term) years.
Consequently, the most recent bibliometric analyses of sustainability in the literature have focused on specific themes like the relationship between sustainability and innovation [26], urban sustainability [27], sports tourism and sustainability [28], sustainability and financial performance of small and medium-sized enterprises [29], corporate sustainability [30], strategic management for sustainability [31], healthcare management for sustainability [32], and the issue of sustainability by employing the triple bottom line [33]. However, it is necessary to update the changes in the field of sustainability, including the broad scope of this concept in the long, medium, and short term.
Therefore, this study aims to present a bibliographic analysis on sustainability to determine the most relevant research topics in the short, medium, and long term, and to identify the main research trends in this area that present a vertiginous growth. The remainder of this paper is as follows: Section 2 introduces the methodology employed to perform the bibliometric analysis. In Section 3, the results and findings of the bibliometric analysis are presented considering a short, medium, and long-term horizon. Section 4 details the main conclusions and future research in sustainability.

2. Materials and Methods

In the literature, several studies propose techniques to perform comprehensive bibliometric studies. In this regard, Mohadab et al. [34] proposed that the primary sources of information for bibliometric analysis are the Scopus and Web of Science databases, and consequently, a bibliometric work carried out in both databases should include the analysis of authors, institutions, countries, type of document, and domains. Tang et al. [35] suggested that bibliometric studies should perform network analysis, frequency analysis, and keyword centrality analysis to identify the groups of nodes and the size of the nodes that these words represent. Likewise, He et al. [36] proposed a set of bibliometric methods for a comprehensive bibliometric review, which includes the analysis of the number of publications and citations in a period, contributions by country or territory, the distribution of citations in journals, subject categories, general and emerging topics, and the detail of emerging topics. Therefore, our study considers a search for documents published in Scopus between 2011 and 2020 employing several bibliometric techniques that allow classifying information by number of documents, subject area, journals where documents are published, authors’ leadership, documents by country, and most cited documents. The main contribution of this study focuses on generating three scenarios for the bibliometric analysis: long, medium, and short term, because sustainability represents a dynamic research topic.
The methodology for the bibliographic analysis on sustainability is based on information obtained from documents published in the Scopus database, related to the area of sustainability for the long term (2011–2020), medium term (2016–2020), and short term (2019–2020). It is clarified that the information included for 2020 corresponds to the first five months of the year since the search process was performed on 31 May 2020. The search equation used was TITLE-ABS-KEY (“Sustainability”) to identify the documents including the concept “sustainability” in their title, content, and keywords. With the information obtained with the search equation, we proceeded to analyze for the long, medium, and short term the evolution of scientific production, the number of documents by subject areas, the authors with the highest number of publications, number of documents by country and territory, documents with the highest number of citations and topics of broader relevance. Likewise, the search equation TITLE-ABS-KEY (“Sustainability” AND “Open Innovation”) is used to analyze documents related to sustainability and open innovation.
To analyze the thematic areas, the percentage of documents covering the 10 leading thematic areas is presented. The number and percentage of documents published by source related to Sustainability are shown to identify publication sources with the highest scientific production. The detail of the main authors in sustainability includes the Scopus Author ID, number of documents published in Scopus related to sustainability, main subject area, institutional affiliation and territory to which they belong. Moreover, the 20 countries with the highest scientific production related to sustainability are analyzed for each period. The analysis of the most cited documents includes the document title, the topic addressed, the authors of the document, and the number of citations in Scopus. On the other hand, the 20 most important research topics in sustainability are analyzed, and a comparative analysis of the evolution over time of the main sustainability topics is equally performed. In this way, the proposed bibliographic analysis on sustainability focuses on determining the most relevant research topics in the short, medium, and long term, and on identifying the main research trends.

3. Results

This section presents the main results of the bibliometric analysis on sustainability for the long, medium, and short term, which are equivalent to a periodicity of 10, 5, and 2 years respectively.

3.1. Research on Sustainability in the Long Term

Based on the documents available in the literature on sustainability, 218,458 documents were identified in Scopus between 1970 and 2020, as shown in Figure 1. These results show sustainability represents a current area of knowledge in the literature because the number of publications displays exponential growth over time. It is clarified that for 2020 the documents published until May were covered, therefore, the number of publications compared to 2019 is lower. However, when extrapolating the scientific production of sustainability in 2020 based on the production of the first 5 months of the year, an estimate of 27,566 documents is obtained, surpassing the production of 2019, and corroborating the continuous growth of scientific production related to sustainability.
Figure 1. Documents published on sustainability between 1970 and 2020.
Analyzing the last 10 years of research on sustainability, 163,581 documents are identified, which is equivalent to 74.9% of the total publications on sustainability, therefore, this area of knowledge has experienced its boom in the course of the past decade, to the point of generating 26,026 documents in 2019 and 11,486 in the first 5 months of 2020. Regarding the leading thematic areas on sustainability in the last 10 years, Table 1 shows that these correspond to Environmental Sciences, Social Sciences, Engineering, Energy, Business Management and Accounting, Biological Sciences, covering 67.8% of the total publications.
Table 1. Documents by subject areas.
Table 2 shows the journals publishing the largest number of documents on sustainability, detailing the first 15 publications that together published approximately 11.9% of the sustainability documents in Scopus in the last 10 years. It is highlighted that Sustainability Switzerland and Journal of Cleaner Production are leaders in the area of sustainability, representing 6.8% of the total publications in the last 10 years. It is noted that Sustainability Switzerland focuses on interdisciplinary issues of environmental, cultural, economic, and social sustainability, while Journal of Cleaner Production focuses on transdisciplinary issues of cleaner production, environment, and sustainability.
Table 2. Journals on sustainability between 2011 and 2020.
On the other hand, Table 3 indicates the authors generating the largest number of sustainability documents in the last 10 years, therefore indicating those authors with more than 60 publications, that is, with an average production rate of more than six documents per year. From Table 3, it is observed that the main authors in the last 10 years are working in thematic areas related to Engineering, Environmental Science, Energy, and Business, Management and Accounting. In addition, these authors belong to diverse universities and territories including North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Table 3. Leading authors on sustainability in the last 10 years.
Figure 2 shows the 20 countries with the most significant scientific production related to sustainability (71.1% of scientific production on sustainability in the last 10 years), indicating that the United States represents the leading country in publications, and sustainability is widely addressed globally with the highest publication rates in countries in North America, Europe, Asia, Oceania, and South America.
Figure 2. Documents by country published on sustainability between 2011 and 2020.
On the other hand, Table 4 lists the 10 most cited articles addressing the issue of sustainability, which receive an average annual citation between 119 and 293 citations. The topics covered by these documents are diverse, including environment, agricultural science, energy, engineering, chemistry, materials science, food, and corporate social responsibility.
Table 4. Most cited documents between 2011 and 2020.
Regarding the research topics, Figure 3 shows the 20 most relevant topics between 2011 and 2020 in the 163,581 documents found in the literature, highlighting the topics of sustainable development, humans, environmental sustainability, climate change, environmental impact, decision-making, and economics, therefore reflecting the three triple bottom line (social, economic, and environmental dimensions).
Figure 3. Sustainability research topics between 2011 and 2020.

3.2. Research on Sustainability in the Medium Term (5 Years)

From the publications on sustainability found in the literature, 97,689 documents (44.7%) were published between 2016 and 2020, showing approximately half of the existing literature on sustainability has emerged in the last five years, confirming the current relevance of this knowledge area which is transversal to thematic areas like environmental sciences, social sciences, engineering, energy, business, management and accounting, biological and agricultural sciences, computer science, economics and finance, medicine, earth sciences, among others, because these subject areas had the same relevance between 2016 and 2020 as between 2011 and 2020, as evidenced in Table 1.
Based on Table 5, Sustainability Switzerland, Journal Of Cleaner Production, Iop Conference Series Earth And Environmental Science, and Science Of The Total Environment continue to be the journals and publications with the largest number of articles on sustainability, providing the 11.9% of all publications on sustainability in the last 5 years. In contrast to the main publications between 2011 and 2020 shown in Table 2, Table 5 highlights that Iop Conference Series Materials Science And Engineering goes from being the eighth publication to being the fifth publication with the largest number of documents in the last five years, Resources Conservation And Recycling moves up from eleven to eight, Renewable And Sustainable Energy Reviews goes from five to six, and Ecological Indicators goes from six to nine. Likewise, publications like PLoS ONE, Wit Transactions On Ecology And The Environment, Energy Policy, Lecture Notes In Computer Science, Applied Energy, Energy Policy, and Ecological Economics disappear from the top 15 of publications on sustainability, while Entrepreneurship And Sustainability Issues, Advances In Intelligent Systems And Computing, Energies, Land Use Policy, Water Switzerland, and International Journal Of Environmental Research And Public Health appear in the top 15, ranking 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15 respectively.
Table 5. Journals on sustainability between 2016 and 2020.
On the other hand, Table 6 shows the main authors that have gained relevance between 2016 and 2020, highlighting authors like Ren, Mbohwa, Klemeš, Streimikiene, Frantzeskaki, and Govindan; and authors like Dincer, Sarkis, Azapagic, continue to be relevant among the 10 most prominent authors in sustainability for the long and medium term. Authors like Lal, Penzenstadler, Schaltegger, and Germani have lost relevance in the number of published documents by not appearing in the top 10 for the medium term, while Geng, Streimikiene, Frantzeskaki, and Govindan appear in the top 10 for the medium term. It is noted that each author in Table 6 has published more than 40 documents on sustainability in the last 5 years. Recurrent thematic areas addressed by these authors correspond to Energy, Environmental Science, Engineering, and Business, Management and Accounting.
Table 6. Main authors on sustainability in the last 5 years.
Figure 4 illustrates the 20 countries and territories with the largest number of studies related to sustainability, highlighting that the United States, United Kingdom, and China continue as leading countries, contributing 26.8% of the scientific production between 2016 and 2020. When comparing Figure 2 with Figure 4, it is deduced that Italy, India, and Indonesia improved their position in scientific production in the medium term, while Australia, Germany, Canada, South Africa, Portugal, Japan, Turkey, and Switzerland reduced its position compared to other countries and territories. Likewise, South Korea appears in the last 5 years as one of the leading countries in the scientific production of sustainability.
Figure 4. Articles published on sustainability between 2016 and 2020.
The documents with the most significant impact on citations between 2016 and 2020 are described in Table 7, reflecting citations ranging on average from 96 to 458 citations per year for each document. Among these documents are those of Bejan [41] and Ong et al. [42] that were among the 10 most cited articles in the long term (Table 4). The topics addressed by these documents are also interdisciplinary, including engineering, chemistry, materials science, technologies, circular economy, collaborative consumption, natural resources, and agriculture.
Table 7. Most cited documents in 2016–2020.
The 20 most relevant research topics between 2016 and 2020 are presented in Figure 5, indicating that sustainable development and humans continue as the leading topics, while decision-making, China, women, procedures, agriculture, and men increased the importance with respect to the results of Figure 3. Likewise, topics like United States and energy use have lost the most relevance when comparing the periods 2011–2020 and 2016–2020. Indeed, topics like innovation and carbon dioxide are no longer among the 20 most relevant topics of sustainability and are replaced by topics such as controlled studies, and adults.
Figure 5. Research topics on sustainability between 2016 and 2020.

3.3. Research on Sustainability in the Short Term (2 Years)

Regarding the short-term analysis, in this period 17.2% of publications on sustainability have been generated, which is equivalent to 37,512 documents, highlighting the relevance of sustainability in the literature in subject areas like environmental sciences, social sciences, engineering, energy, business, management and accounting, biological and agricultural sciences, computer science, economics and finance, medicine, earth sciences, and materials sciences, which were equally relevant to the analysis for large and medium term.
According to Table 8, the journals and publications with the largest number of articles published on sustainability in the short term are Sustainability Switzerland, Journal Of Cleaner Production, Iop Conference Series Earth And Environmental Science, Science Of The Total Environment, and Iop Conference Series Materials Science And Engineering, corresponding to 17.0% of publications in the short term on sustainability. In contrast to the publications shown in Table 5, the journals Environment Development And Sustainability and Environmental Science And Pollution Research appear in positions 12 and 13 respectively for the short term, while Renewable And Sustainable Energy Reviews and Land Use Policy disappear from this list, ranking 19 and 24 respectively on the date of this study.
Table 8. Journals on sustainability between 2019 and 2020.
On the other hand, Table 9 shows the authors with the largest number of documents published in the short term, highlighting that Mbohwa, Sarkis, Azapagic, Klemeš, and Streimikiene belong to the top 10 both for the medium and the short term. It is also identified that Streimikiene, Jermsittiparsert, Azapagic, Sarkis, Tsang, Alola, and Fu present 20 or more documents between 2019 and May 2020. Likewise, the recurrent areas in the authors from Table 9 correspond to Environmental Science, Engineering, Energy, and Business, Management and Accounting.
Table 9. Main authors in sustainability in the short term.
Regarding the analysis by territories, Figure 6 shows that the United States, China and the United Kingdom dominate the scientific production related to sustainability by contributing 25.6% of the world’s scientific production in the short term. When comparing Figure 6 with Figure 4, countries like China, India, Spain, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Portugal improved their position in scientific production in the short term, while the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, and South Africa worsened its position when comparing to the medium term. Likewise, Russia appears in the short term as one of the leading countries in scientific production on sustainability.
Figure 6. Articles published on sustainability between 2019 and 2020.
Analyzing the impact of publications in the short term, Table 10 lists the most cited articles addressing sustainability, reflecting from 97 to 548 citations per document between 2019 and 2020. The document of Willett et al. [55] obtained the highest citation addressing a universal healthy diet of reference to increase the achievement of SDGs. The topics addressed by the other documents include areas of knowledge of energy, economics, natural resources, technologies, ecological footprint, agriculture, and climate change.
Table 10. Most cited documents in 2019–2020.
In the short term, Figure 7 shows that research topics like sustainable development and humans continue to lead in the area of sustainability, while topics like Climate Change, China, Women, Controlled Studies, Adults, and Men increase their importance with respect to the medium term. Similarly, the topics of Procedures, United States, and Energy Use are no longer among the most relevant topics on sustainability and are replaced by topics like Non-human, Recycling, and Economic and Social Effects.
Figure 7. Research topics on sustainability between 2019 and 2020.

3.4. Research on Sustainability and Open Innovation

As shown in Figure 8, 227 documents on sustainability and open innovation were identified in Scopus between 1997 and 2020. From the first publication in 1997, it took 10 years (2007) for other documents on this topic to be published, and only until 2013 a considerable increase in the number of published documents appeared. Several documents were published in 2016–2020 (67.4%), and 45.8% of the documents in this topic were published in the short term, between 2019 and 2020. This indicates that sustainability with open innovation represents a topic that has been gaining interest in the recent years.
Figure 8. Documents published on sustainability and open innovation between 1997 and 2020.
Figure 9 shows the leading authors on sustainability and open innovation, highlighting Park and Yun as the authors with most documents in this topic. These authors have made conceptual models and dynamic systems applied to the macroeconomic, collaborative economy, and electronic commerce fields, all considering some component of sustainability.
Figure 9. Leading authors on sustainability and open innovation.
The search process distinguishes open innovation dynamics, micro and macro open innovation dynamics, and open innovation engineering as the main working lines on sustainability with open innovation. Regarding open innovation dynamics, Yun et al. [65] proposed a system dynamics model to relate open innovation as one of the determinants of economic growth, and for this, they include in three sub-economies: open innovation (led by SMEs and start-ups), the closed open innovation (led by large companies) and social innovation. Yun et al. [66] performed a study to establish the incidence of open innovation strategies in the dynamics of the business models of three collaborative economy companies in the car-sharing sector. Yun et al. [67] analyzed the dynamics of open innovation through a case study of Alibaba company (B2B platform) from 1997 to 2017, finding that Alibaba has adopted models of creative and global e-commerce business through open innovation and an open culture conducive to innovation.
Regarding micro and macro open innovation dynamics, Yun and Liu [23] performed an extensive literature review to generate a conceptual model of open innovation, closed open innovation, and social innovation subsystems, which represent an alternative to the achievement of economic, social, and environmental sustainability. In this model, industries adopt open platforms to maintain innovation; universities increasingly participate in co-creation and technology transfer activities; governments changed from regulation control toward facilitation, and the society is increasingly interested in a collaborative economy and new R&D concepts. Concerning open innovation engineering, Yun et al. [68] proposed a conceptual model of open innovation engineering, which is supported by a literature review to show the expansion paths of open innovation and new business models that can be triggered from engineering.

4. Discussion

This section presents the discussions around the general topic of sustainability and the relationship between sustainability and open innovation.

4.1. Sustainability

The bibliometric analysis demonstrates an exponential growth in scientific production on sustainability from 2004, the year since which 93.3% of the sustainability literature has been generated. Regarding the last 10, 5, and 2 years, statistics show that in the literature, 74.9%, 44.7%, and 17.2% of the total sustainability documents have been generated respectively, indicating once again the importance and relevance of this field of research in the scientific and academic community in recent years. Specifically, the most relevant thematic areas of sustainability in the long, medium, and short term correspond to environmental sciences, social sciences, engineering, energy, business, management and accounting, and biological and agricultural sciences, indicating that sustainability represents a transdisciplinary (covers several disciplines transversely, including the triple bottom line to satisfy the current and future needs of society) and interdisciplinary (combines and integrates several areas of knowledge, implying the synergy between them to add value to the object of study) field of knowledge.
Similarly, the most relevant documents (with the highest citation index) for the long, medium, and short term address issues related to the environment, agricultural sciences, energy, engineering, chemistry, materials science, food, corporate social responsibility, technologies, economics, natural resources, and climate change, demonstrating the broad range of disciplines addressed by sustainability and contributing to sustainable development. Authors like Dincer, Sarkis, and Azapagic stand out for belonging to the top 10 of the authors with the most considerable number of publications on sustainability in the long and medium term, and similarly, Mbohwa, Sarkis, Azapagic, Klemeš, and Streimikiene are identified as the most influential authors on sustainability in the medium and short term. In general, the most productive authors on sustainability publications in the long, medium, and short term address issues related to Engineering, Energy, Environmental Science, and Business, Management, and Accounting.
Additionally, women like Azapagic, Penzenstadler, Streimikiene, and Frantzeskakide stand out among the most influential authors in the periods analyzed. Of these female authors, Azapagic has prevailed among the main authors in sustainability in the large, medium, and short term, performing in engineering for sustainable development, sustainable technology, life cycle assessment, and carbon footprinting. Penzenstadler stands out as one of the most relevant authors in the long term and her work focuses on environmental sustainability in software engineering and computer science. Streimikiene is an expert on sustainable energy development, sustainability assessment, and climate change mitigation policies, and is one of the authors with the largest production in sustainability in the medium and short term. Frantzeskaki stands out as one of the authors with the largest scientific production in the short term, and her main publications are related to environmental governance, and urban sustainability transitions. This shows that women maintain an important participation in the scientific production of sustainability in the long, medium, and short term, and it is expected to increase because of the interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary scope of sustainability and the growth of participation of women worldwide in scientific production in diverse areas of knowledge [69,70,71].
Delving into the role of women in sustainability, the bibliometric analysis indicates that the documents addressing topics of sustainability and women/woman/female for the long, medium, and short term are directly related to research topics like age (child, adolescent, young adult, adults, middle aged, aged), gender, male, pregnancy, controlled studies, major clinical studies, organization and management, education, women’s status, economics, health care delivery, psychology, empowerment, and human experiment. For the short term, relationships with topics of climate change, leadership, and perception are identified. This shows that research in sustainability and women is primarily focused on studies related to women’s life stages, clinical studies, pregnancy, and midwifery, leadership and empowerment in organizations and businesses, and their role in the economy. Consequently, the journals that contribute the most publications on sustainability and women are PLoS ONE (interdisciplinary research in natural sciences, medical research, engineering, social sciences and humanities), BMC Public Health (epidemiology of disease and public health), Women And Birth (all matters that affect women and birth, from pre-conceptual counselling, through pregnancy, birth, and the first six weeks postnatal), BMJ Open (clinical medicine, public health and epidemiology), Midwifery (pregnancy, birth, and maternity care for childbearing women, their babies and families), and International Journal Of Environmental Research And Public Health (interdisciplinary research in environmental health sciences and public health). Moreover, the territories that contribute the most research documents on sustainability and women in the long, medium, and short term are the United States and United Kingdom, highlighting that United States in each period generates more than twice the scientific production of the United Kingdom. Other countries that contribute a significant number of publications are India, Australia, Canada, Spain, and South Africa.
Returning to the general bibliometric analysis on sustainability, the analysis of principal territories and countries in publications leads us to identify that the United States is the leader in the long, medium, and short term, followed by the United Kingdom and China. Other countries with significant rates of publications belong to North America, Europe, Asia, Oceania, and South America. Regarding the most influential sustainability journals, Sustainability Switzerland and Journal Of Cleaner Production represent the leading journals because of the considerable number of published articles on sustainability, which is caused by the scope of these journals focused on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches. Followed by these, Iop Conference Series Earth And Environmental contributes significantly to the number of published documents on sustainability as it is a publication compiling proceedings papers from multiple conferences related to Earth and Environmental Science; and Science Of The Total Environment is ranked as the fourth publication with the largest number of documents being a multidisciplinary journal focused on research on the total environment. Therefore, the most influential journals in sustainability are usually transdisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and multidisciplinary publications, which are in line with the concept of sustainability that encompasses multiple disciplines and relates them to each other to pursue the same objectives.
Concerning keywords denoting the most relevant research topics on sustainability, Figure 10 highlights that sustainable development, humans, and environmental sustainability have remained as the three most important topics related to sustainability, as they are addressed by the largest number of documents in the literature. Climate change and decision-making issues have been disputed for fourth and fifth place in the periods analyzed. It is also noteworthy that the environmental impact and life cycle have retained, respectively, sixth and eighth place of relevance in the periods analyzed, while the issue of economics falls two places in the short term. On the other hand, the issue of China has grown in importance in the last 10 years ranking in the short term as the seventh most relevant issue on sustainability, also supported by China being one of the three countries generating the largest number of sustainability documents in the literature.
Figure 10. Evolution of the main sustainability issues in 2011–2020.
Some topics that have lost relevance over time are United States and Energy Use, which, being respectively in positions twelve and sixteen in the long-term analysis, disappear for the short-term ranking. Likewise, innovation and carbon dioxide remain significant topics in the long term but are not protagonists in the medium and short term, while Controlled Studies and Adults appear like some of the key topics in the medium term, even increasing their relevance for the short term. Finally, in the short term, the topics of Non-human, Recycling, and Economic and social effects appear among the 20 most relevant sustainability topics, creating opportunities for new lines of research in sustainability.
Analyzing most of the bibliometric studies on sustainability, it is identified that these adopt a sectoral approach. Pizzi et al. [72] conducted a bibliometric study on the SDGs in the business sector between 2012 and 2019, identifying main research topics like technological innovation, supporting companies in developing countries, non-financial reporting, and education for SDGs, and detailing the most cited documents per year and the most cited authors. Likewise, Bhatt et al. [73] proposed a bibliometric analysis of the manufacturing sector to identify trends in green manufacturing, analyzing the number of documents per year, most cited authors, most cited documents, and identification of co-citations, which allowed them to conclude that most of the literature focuses on the relationship between lean and green practices and organizational performance from an environmental point of view. Moreover, Det and Hallinger [74] performed a bibliometric study on sustainable construction in the last 25 years based on 2877 Scopus documents, from which they analyzed the publications by country, school of thought, and institution, and the co-occurrence of keywords, highlighting four dominant topics: alternative materials for sustainable construction, sustainable construction management, recycling and waste reduction, and social sustainability in sustainable construction management.
On the other hand, Hallinger et al. [75] presented a bibliometric review on games for sustainability education between 1997 and 2019. They considered the growth of the literature in this period, geographical distribution, type of publications, topics with the most publications on the subject, co-occurrence of keywords, and types of research designs performed. The results indicate the predominance of non-experimental research based on web technologies and topics like environmental impact, natural resources, manufacturing production, social sustainability, and climate change. Unlike the approaches of the abovementioned studies addressing a sectoral approach, our study addresses a general approach by being based on a broader concept such as sustainability, involving the use of bibliometric techniques to classify information between 2011 and 2020 according to the number of documents, subject areas, most relevant journals, authors’ leadership, documents by country, and the most cited documents. In addition, one of the main contributions of this study is related to the dynamics of the most relevant topics in sustainability in the long, medium, and short term, allowing to identify the positioning of relevant topics over time.

4.2. The Relationship between Sustainability and Open Innovation

When conducting the search equation in Scopus about sustainability and open innovation, 227 documents are obtained, which does not place this topic among the key topics on sustainability. However, 216 of 227 documents (95.2%) have been published in the last 10 years, which indicates it is a growing topic that has been gaining attention in the literature, generating an average of 21.6 documents per year in the past decade. Likewise, it is identified that between 2016 and 2020, 153 documents on sustainability and open innovation were published, which represents 67.4% of documents published on this topic in the last 10 years, therefore indicating an average of 30.6 documents published per year, and confirming it is a topic that has been gaining importance in the medium term. In the short term, 77 documents addressing sustainability and open innovation were published, representing 35.6% of the documents published in the last 10 years, revealing an increase in the average number of publications per year, going from an average of 21.6 documents per year in the long term to 38.5 documents in the short term.
The joint study of sustainability and open innovation has not been one of the main topics on sustainability for the three scenarios analyzed, however, this topic is gaining attention in the literature. This trend is due to the fact that companies achieve their industrial objectives and sustainability goals by using open innovation for the development of sustainable goods and services, all this considering an inclusive innovation framework that brings together diverse stakeholders [21,76]. This implies the achievement of sustainability has become a purpose for distinct sectors, like e-commerce [67], the sharing economy [66], and those belonging to the fourth industrial revolution [23], and for diverse types of companies, like SMEs, start-ups, and large companies [65]. Likewise, the achievement of sustainable economic development rely on choices and improvements from different stakeholders like consumers, providers, and other supply chain partners [68].
Specifically, topics like open innovation dynamics, micro and macro open innovation dynamics, and open innovation engineering have focused attention on the discussions around the relationship between sustainability and open Innovation. Regarding open innovation dynamics, recent studies indicate that open innovation strategies determine the dynamic and creative change of business models, revenue business model, and responsibility business models, and the dynamics of business models will depend to a great extent the degree of open innovation of companies and interactions with official entities [66]. Similarly, it is identified that an appropriate balance between the market open innovation, closed open innovation, and social open innovation systems, which involve start-ups, SMEs, large companies, and society, will generate significant economic growth, especially when one of the systems are not completely dominant over others [65]. This implies the integration of the macro-dynamics of open innovation represented by the systems of open innovation, closed open innovation, and social innovation, and of the micro-dynamics of open innovation that can be brought together in a quadruple-helix model involving industries, universities, governments, and society [23].
Likewise, open innovation allows the generation of creative business models in a short time, for which it is critical to guarantee an open innovation-friendly culture to control and overcome the complexity and transaction costs that open innovation implies [67]. Even the scope of open innovation toward sustainable development can be triggered by engineering by allowing the creation of new business models that connect flows between technological innovation, business model development, market performance, and investment for continuous improvement. This relies on both the awareness of consumers’ choices from the demand side and the practical improvements of production from the supply side and can be supported by big data to introduce new information about markets and society [68].
On the other hand, the bibliometric analysis focused on open innovation with sustainability identifies that the most recurrent study areas on this topic are business, management and accounting, and social sciences, where the leading issues are related to competition, smart cities, living labs (Public-Private-People partnerships where users and producers can co-create innovations), business development, co-creation, knowledge management, mitigation of climate change, and ecosystems, which in turn represent promising topics for future research on sustainability with open innovation, supporting the achievement of industry objectives and sustainability goals. Because of the interest that this topic arouses and the growth of publications in the literature, future literature reviews could apply the three scenarios proposed in this work to describe the behavior of sustainability with open innovation.

5. Conclusions

Sustainability represents a transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary field of research encompassing environmental, economic, and social dimensions to guarantee the fulfillment of the current and future needs of society, which has allowed its exponential growth in recent years, especially since 2004, with a significant increase in the last 10 years. This means that the documents with the highest impact index address issues related to the environment, agricultural and biological sciences, energy, engineering, chemistry, materials science, food, corporate social responsibility, technologies, economy, natural resources, and climate change; and that the most influential authors on sustainability work mainly on topics like Engineering, Energy, Environmental Science, and Business, Management and Accounting.
The bibliographic analysis performed in this study determined that North America, Europe, Asia, Oceania, and South America represent the principal territories in sustainability research, highlighting the leadership in publications by the United States, United Kingdom and China. On the other hand, the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach of journals like Sustainability Switzerland and Journal Of Cleaner Production has conducted them to remain as the leading sustainability journals in the long, medium, and short term. These journals are recognized by the massive number of published articles in this field of research, allowing the publication of articles with alternative approaches and applications, addressing the current and future needs of any society, and by having a high turnover publishing policy.
The sustainability research trends that remain solid in the analyzed scenarios (long, medium, and short term) are related to sustainable development, humans, environmental sustainability, climate change, decision-making, environmental impact, economics, life cycle, and energy efficiency. In the short term, publications related to topics like China, women, and controlled studies have increased significantly. Therefore, these topics can be approached individually or jointly by researchers interested in the research field of sustainability.
Likewise, this study highlights the role of women in sustainability identifying leading female authors such as Azapagic, Penzenstadler, Streimikiene, and Frantzeskakide for the long, medium, and short term. However, female leadership in sustainability research is expected to increase, contributing directly to the achievement of the SDG 5 of gender equality. In addition, the results show that research on sustainability and women/female relates to issues of women’s life stages, healthcare, psychology, leadership, and empowerment in organizations and businesses.
Future works should perform this bibliometric analysis again to determine if the dynamics of publications on sustainability changes in the number of publications, subject areas, countries with the leading scientific production, relevant authors, and most influential publications. Consequently, an extension of this study could evaluate the evolution of sustainability topics, opening new research lines. Since sustainable development is the most researched sustainability topic, it is recommended to perform a bibliometric analysis and literature review on sustainable development in the long, medium, and short term, and adding analysis of co-citations, school of thought, types of research designs as has been done in other bibliometric studies identified in the literature. In this way, future works could expose prominent topics and discussions around sustainable development, constituting a significant path to reach sustainability. Finally, as sustainability with open innovation represents a topic with increasing number of publications per year, future systematic literature reviews can be oriented toward the study of this topic in the three scenarios described in this work.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, J.A.C. and A.L.-P.; Methodology, J.A.C. and A.L.-P.; Software, J.A.C.; Validation, A.L.-P.; Writing—Original Draft Preparation, J.A.C.; Writing—Review & Editing, J.A.C. and A.L.-P.; Supervision, A.L.-P.; Project Administration, J.A.C. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This research received no external funding.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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