Digital technologies are being integrated into everyday life worldwide, constantly transforming our society and labor markets. The EU requires digitally smart people in the labor market and has promoted this through the Digital Agenda. In this context, our paper aims to investigate the diversity of the EU member states in terms of the digitalization of the labor market in the post-pandemic context. Using a multidimensional perspective, we considered indicators reflecting not only labor market specificities but also the degree of digitalization and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. First, the strength of the association between digitalization and the labor market indicators was quantified through a Pearson test, while the cluster analysis highlighted some patterns for the high-tech EU economies compared to the medium- and low-tech EU economies. Among the high-tech economies cluster, Finland stands out as the frontrunner in the EU’s digital transformation, with the most digitally skilled workers. At the opposite pole are the South-Eastern countries, which have the most to do to recover and still lack an effective digital policy framework to support youth workers’ access to digital training. The practical implications of our study consist mostly of providing decision-makers with directions on issues to tackle when implementing EU digital policies.

Digitalization has significantly reshaped human and social life worldwide, serving as a powerful enabler of a sustainable economy, while being directly aligned with Sustainable Development Goal 9, among others. The literature on digitalization and sustainability boosted since 2017, confirming its importance. Unlike most previous studies, this paper extracted articles from both the Scopus and Web of Science platforms, and the bibliometric analysis was conducted using the new Python library, pyBibX, for the cleaned concatenated dataset, as well as Bibliometrix in R for the parallel analysis on the two platforms. We conducted both a performance analysis to measure scientific impact and citations in the quest to better understand the research field and also a science mapping to visually represent the scientific research and its development. Our findings suggest that Sustainability is the main journal with published articles on digitalization and sustainability, whereas China has the largest number of papers in the field and collaborations between countries. Finally, by applying Natural Language Processing, we identified as best topics: digital, sustainable, development, sustainability, digitalization, study, research, transformation, innovation, and model. Moreover, we dug deeper into policy implications to show how these findings could serve policymakers and stakeholders in academia and industry.

Grey systems theory, through the special mathematics and methods offered, such as through seeing numbers as intervals rather than fixed values, provides a bridge between the two extreme cases in which a system under investigation might find, namely, a white system, easy to read and understand, and a black system, completely unknown to the investigator. Since its appearance in 1982, the theory has contributed to solving various challenges traditionally addressed through complex means. The paper provides a comprehensive perspective on the evolution of the grey systems domain over the 42-year period analysed, spanning from 1982 to 2024. Utilizing a dataset extracted from the Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science Core Collection database, the paper conducts a bibliometric analysis that includes the identification of key journals, affiliations, authors, and countries, as well as the collaboration networks among authors and countries. It also analyses the most frequently used keywords and authors’ keywords. The annual growth rate of 12.99% indicates a sustained interest among researchers. Using the Biblioshiny 4.2.3 library in R version 4.4.1, a variety of visualisations have been created, including thematic maps and WordClouds. A detailed review of the most cited papers has been performed to highlight the role of grey systems in advancing intelligent decision-making techniques. In terms of results, it has been observed that the university with the highest contribution to the field is the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics while the most influential figure in the area of grey systems in terms of the number of published papers is Sifeng Liu. As expected, China, the home of grey systems theory, is the country with the most notable contribution in terms of published papers and international collaboration networks.

As the digitalization trend is progressively establishing a solid foundation in terms of both implementation and scientific research, its effects may be noticed across every sector of the economy. Therefore, offering sustainable solutions becomes essential for implementing digital transitions in a cohesive manner. Additionally, the study of Grey systems is another topic that has relevance when investigating the implications of digitalization in sustainability. Grey systems theory is an elaborate decision-making technique that focuses on objects that incorporate both known and unknown information. This approach emerged from the notion of a “black box” in which “black objects” are defined by the absence of information. Grey systems address the gap between the “black objects” with unknown information and the “white objects” with complete knowledge. The interaction of these domains is centered on the requirement for a decision-making framework that facilitates a sustained digital transformation. The novelty of the paper consists of tackling the theory of Grey systems’ implications in the economy’s sustainable digitalization, where the literature review is rather scarce. Having considered a generous timespan of the investigation from 1997 to 2024, we gathered a large dataset of papers extracted from the ISI Web of Science database, which allows for relevant inferences in terms of research trends and thematic directions in the field. The analysis focused on emphasizing the research capabilities and landscape of this rapidly developing subject. The annual growth rate of published papers is 11.7%, indicating the increased interest of researchers in the study of this subject. The visualizations and tables used in the analysis were generated with the help of the “ Biblioshiny” (4.3.0) library from the R programming language and highlighted the main information related to topics, authors, journals, collaborations, and research networks. The present paper reviews the ten most cited publications in the dataset in order to provide a comprehensive assessment of the study on the concepts of Grey systems theory, digitalization, and sustainability to date.

In the past couple of decades, the field of digitalization has grown in popularity. Given the substantial amount of research supporting its significance, it can be stated that this phenomenon manages to make its presence felt in any field at the moment, including the air traffic sector. The discussed effects may be seen in almost every element of air transport, whether it is the performance of the aircraft or the passengers' experience from the moment of ticket purchase to the completion of the flight. Between 2009 and 2019, air passenger revenue worldwide increased by 63%, from 374 billion $ to 612 billion $. Before COVID-19, air travel increased significantly. As part of the fourth industrial revolution, the digital transformation manages to change organizational paradigms and working practices while improving performance. Having this in mind, we aimed to identify the impact of digitalization in air flights domain, and what measures could be applied to reduce CO2 emissions. A bibliometric study of the previously conducted research in the area was performed using the Biblioshiny library, based on a set of extracted articles pertinent to the effects of digitalization on the aviation field. The viewpoints of this research emphasise the benefits of digital transformation and highlight the necessity of digitalization in all industries, particularly air traffic.

The implementation of new technologies comes with the use of digitalization and Artificial Intelligence (AI) as core drivers. AI, including machine learning and deep learning, thrives in digitally mature environments with robust infrastructures and vast data availability With respect to AI innovations, digitalization is equally important because it provides the necessary computation power, data frameworks, and even the network systems needed to spearhead innovations. However, global disparities exist, with the United States and China excelling in AI commercialization, while Europe leads in academic research but struggles with industry adoption due to fragmented policies and inconsistent investment in AI-driven enterprises. This study conducts a systematic bibliometric analysis to examine the relationship between digitalization and AI research productivity. Using data from the Web of Science Core Collection, bibliometric techniques such as keyword co-occurrence analysis, citation network mapping, and thematic clustering were applied to assess AI research trends and their connection to digitalization. Responding to the outlining issue: How has digitalization influenced AI research evolution, and what are the key bibliometric trends? Findings confirm that digitally advanced regions lead in AI research output, while Europe faces commercialization challenges due to regulatory constraints and weak industry-academia collaboration. This study offers a novel contribution by integrating bibliometric analysis with policy insights to examine AI commercialization challenges, a dimension that has received limited attention in prior systematic reviews. This analysis points to insufficient academic activity and industrial adoption and calls for collaboration, dedicated policies for AI, and infrastructure investments. This helps policymakers focused on AI innovation as well as those in charge of AI governance and business leaders aiming to improve industry competition and commercialization.