A Bibliometric and Thematic Review of Metaverse and Reverse Logistics for a Sustainable Circular Economy

Reverse logistics has become one of the vital foundations of the circular economy, through recovery, reuse and recycling of materials and products. At the same time, the current development of technologies related to the metaverse (the so-called digital twins, VR, and blockchain) is unlocking opportunities to streamline the work of reverse logistics systems by making it virtual, tracking in real-time, and decision-making capacity. Furthermore, an inclusive review at the trio of reverse logistics, circular economy, and immersive technologies is yet to have a review into it. To fill in this gap, this paper performs a systematic literature review in addition to bibliometric analysis of 198 publications found in the Scopus database between 2003–2025. Using SPAR-4-SLR protocol and a collection of bibliometric methods, such as performance analysis, keyword co-occurrence analysis, bibliographic coupling, and thematic evolution analysis, the paper obtains the main authors, trend of publications and citations in the field, intellectual structure, and significant thematic clusters within it. Namely, there are six keyword co-occurrence clusters and seven bibliographic coupling clusters identified and such emerging topics as blockchain-enabled circularity, reverse logistics of electric vehicles, remanufacturing optimization, the future of the metaverse are mentioned. This research will enrich the literature with the synthesis of conceptual landscape, feat of mapping and the rise of thematic evolution, and a future research agenda. The triangulation of themes is based on the concept of creating a theoretical framework that will guide the action of scholars and practitioners to exploit metaverse technologies in achieving sustainable reverse logistics in circular economy paradigm.