Examining the trend of humanitarian supply chain studies: pre, during and post COVID-19 pandemic

Purpose This research aims to shed light on the trend of humanitarian supply chain (HSC) studies in the era of pre, during and post coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic outbreaks. This study provides comprehensive bibliometric mapping published in the 21 top vintage sources globally providing detailed metadata on HSC articles. The manuscript objectives are threefold: to explore the documents that are published in the field of humanitarian logistics and supply chain; second, to identify details of articles in humanitarian logistics and supply chain and thirdly, to explore research the critical area published in the HSC in pre, during and post era of pandemic COVID-19.Design/methodology/approach This research adopts bibliometric analysis of HSC studies using the Biblioshiny, a shiny app for the Bibliometrix R package. The tool employed in this study decodes the data extracted from the Scopus database to various visualized forms. The review of the HSC studies in this research covers all related publications from 2006 to early 2022. The record of the article was scanned and refined accordingly.Findings A multi perspectives of HSC studies were explored, discussed and identified. The bibliometric analysis findings offer significant information on the current and future trend publications in the area of humanitarian logistics and supply chain. Additionally, it also provides significant information on the highly cited documents in humanitarian logistics and supply chain studies, most productive contributors, keywords analysis findings, most productive countries and sources, network analysis data on co-occurrence network and themes mapping information in the field of humanitarian logistics supply chain before and after pandemic COVID-19.Research limitations/implications A multi-perspective of HSC studies was explored only within the online Scopus database. It excludes other articles published in other databases. Future research could explore related articles published in other recognized databases.Practical implications Practitioners can use multi perspectives findings from pre, during and post-pandemic COVID-19 issues discussed in this paper to get new insight and perception of the issue to facilitate their current and future operation and strategy.Originality/value To the best of the researchers’ knowledge, this is the first bibliometric study to analyze the trend of HSC studies using Biblioshiny focusing on pre, during and post COVID-19 pandemic. The review highlights annual publication trends, most productive authors, most cited papers, most productive countries, most productive institutions and most productive sources, which leads to a number of future research agendas for future studies.