Harnessing Digital Technologies to Transition Towards a Circular Supply Chain
A special issue of Systems (ISSN 2079-8954). This special issue belongs to the section "Supply Chain Management".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 April 2026
Special Issue Editors
Interests: public goods: XaaS; industrial symbiosis; circular supply chains; impact of AI on economies of scale
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
We hereby invite scholars to submit papers to a Special Issue of Systems highlighting how digital technologies contribute to the transition towards circular supply chains and improve existing circular supply chains. Questions which may be covered in this Special Issue include the following:
- What are the drivers of the transition towards a circular supply chain? How do digital technologies facilitate this transition? To what degree is the transition motivated by market opportunities and profits?
- What is the economic and environmental impact of utilizing digital tools on resource optimization and waste reduction within circular systems?
- How do digital tools contribute to enhance circular supply chain management?
- How do companies dimension circular supply chains? What role do economies of scale and economies of scope play?
- How may data-driven approaches improve transparency, traceability, and predictability in circular supply chains?
The “transition” addressed in the title of this Special Issue is to be interpreted as a particular kind of business system innovation. We welcome papers with different levels of analysis (e.g., management analysis, supply chain analysis, or market structure analysis), as well as different approaches to circularity (e.g., down-/upcycling of products, industrial symbiosis, or properties of secondary markets). Our objective is to collect a group of papers that complement each other in order to see the wider picture and identify common denominators.
Dr. Thomas Laudal
Dr. Ali Turkyilmaz
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Systems is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- circular value chains
- digitalization
- business model innovation
- resource optimization
- supply chain transparency and traceability
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