Sustainable Construction Materials and Green Infrastructure: A Global Bibliometric Analysis of Environmental Innovation in Civil Engineering (2025–2026)

Abstract

This study presents a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of global research on sustainable construction materials and green infrastructure indexed in Scopus during 2025–2026. Using 19,991 documents from 2,011 sources, analyzed through Bibliometrix and Biblioshiny, the study examines publication trends, source impact, authorship patterns, institutional productivity, and geographical collaboration. Results reveal a rapidly expanding yet uneven research landscape characterized by strong regional concentration and varying citation performance. At the journal level, Sustainability (Switzerland) leads in volume (944 papers), while Journal of Cleaner Production and Construction and Building Materials demonstrate superior impact (h-index = 12 and 11, respectively). Authorship analysis shows dominance by East Asian researchers—particularly Wang Y., Zhang Y., and institutions such as Tsinghua and Tongji Universities—while collaboration data indicate limited international engagement from high-output regions. Conversely, countries like Australia and Germany exhibit smaller publication counts but stronger cross-border collaboration and higher citation-per-article ratios. Overall, the findings highlight a maturing but hierarchically structured research domain, where productivity, impact, and collaboration are unevenly distributed across regions and journals. Bridging these disparities through diversified publication strategies and enhanced international partnerships is essential to translate the growing volume of sustainability research into global environmental and engineering impact.