With more and more attention has been paid into the domain of closed loop supply chain (CLSC), the number of outputs has increased significantly in the past few years. The purpose of this paper is to provide more information about the characteristics of CLSC-related publications and the evolution of the whole area over the decades. Based on 856 publications retrieved from Web of Science, two effective methods, the bibliometric analysis and main path analysis are adopted in this study. This study helps researchers understand the general information of this domain from a macro level and grasp the history, development status and possible directions for the future research.
