Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fragility of the global food supply chain, strengthened consumers' awareness of the traceability system throughout the supply chain, and gradually changed consumers' consumption concepts and consumption patterns. Therefore, the aim of this study was to analyse the relevant literature on food safety in the food supply chain, examine its current status, hot spots, and development trends, and provide some suggestions for academics and relevant government departments in food supply chain safety research.Methods: We collected the literature on the food safety research of the food supply chain from the Scopus database, used BibExcel to count the subject categories, published journals, geographical distributions, research institutions, authors, and keywords in the literature, and used Pajek software to analyse the keywords in the literature, perform co-occurrence analysis, draw related knowledge maps, and perform cluster analysis on primary keywords. Finally, to study the development trend, we used CorTexT software to illustrate the theme evolution path map in this research field.Results: The keyword visualization network revealed the following key research topics: (1) food safety at the consumer end of the food supply chain, (2) food safety management in the food supply chain, (3) risk management of food safety in the food safety chain, and (4) food safety at the production end of the food supply chain.Conclusions: After comprehensive discussion and analysis, we concluded that food supply chain management may be a hot topic in the future, especially in traceability management combined with the blockchain. It is necessary to explore in-depth how the blockchain can affect the food supply chain to provide a theoretical basis for managing the latter.

As one of the disruptive technologies in the fourth industrial revolution, Blockchain has irrevocably changed how people live and work. Many scholars have studied the Blockchain, and the number of related publications has increased over time. Bibliometrics is an excellent method to study the development trend of a specific field. However, few scholars have used bibliometrics to research Blockchain; the inheritance and evolution among its different research themes have not yet been fully understood. This study emphasizes the scientific evolution and research focus of Blockchain through bibliometric analysis. We analyzed 2993 publications from 2014 to 2020 using co-word analysis and cluster analysis with bibliometric tools such as the SciMAT. The most productive author, country, institutions and leading research areas were identified, outlining the Blockchain field’s fundamental developments. The results show the changes in keywords regarding Blockchain summarize the research hotspots in different periods. The study discusses the evolution process of various themes in each period, providing a meaningful reference for scholars to identify research hotspots and future research directions in the Blockchain field.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify major research topics and propose future research directions for the short food supply chains (SFSCs) by conducting a comprehensive bibliometric analysis.Design/methodology/approach: A step-by-step literature review was performed. A total of 684 scientific papers were retrieved from Scopus, dated between 2000 and 2020. Then, content analysis was conducted based on 162 articles selected from the co-citation analysis. Bibexcel and Gephi software were employed to analyse, integrate and visualize the data.Findings: The results of the descriptive analysis provided insights into publication trends, prominent countries, institutions and journal sources, which had not been fully captured or evaluated by previous reviews. In the citation analysis, the authors determined the highly cited papers based on the global citation. Additionally, in the co-citation analysis, the authors derived six research clusters, identified research gaps in each of six clusters and then suggested possible future research directions.Originality/value: Although several reviews have focused on certain aspects of SFSCs, a comprehensive review has been lacking. This study is among the first to comprehensively examine the knowledge structure of SFSCs research by using rigorous bibliometric analysis. More importantly, the future lines presented here offer potential insights for SFSCs researchers and policymakers.