Five years of Management and Sustainability: An Arab Review: A bibliometric overview
Badar Latif, Mohamed ElbannaPurpose
This article provides a bibliometric review of Management and Sustainability: An Arab Review (MSAR) during its first five years (2022–2026), assessing its scholarly trajectory, thematic focus and contribution to sustainability and management research from an Arab perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
A comprehensive bibliometric analysis was conducted using the SCOPUS database. Data were processed with the Bibliometrix R package and visualized in VOSviewer to examine publication trends, citation impact, co-authorship networks, institutional affiliations, keyword co-occurrence and thematic development.
Findings
Results reveal a sharp increase in publication output, from 11 articles in 2022, 16 articles in 2023, 25 articles in 2024, 36 in 2025 with 82 early cite paper and 19 in 2026 (until March 2026) with 24 early cite papers, reflecting the journal's growing visibility. Egypt emerged as the dominant contributor, followed by the UAE, Malaysia and Jordan, while international collaborations indicate growing cross-country participation in authorship networks. The conceptual and keyword analyses demonstrate that the primary research topic is sustainability, which is closely related to corporate governance, consumer behavior, sustainable development, artificial intelligence, climate change and regional contexts, including Egypt and the UAE. These findings illustrate the increasing interdisciplinary nature of sustainability studies, with governance, technological innovation and regional development perspectives incorporated into the journal.
Research limitations/implications
The analysis is limited by the journal's first five years, meaning that long-term trends remain uncertain and patterns may shift as the journal matures. A citation lag also limits the visibility of more recent contributions, potentially underestimating their eventual impact. Furthermore, the strong concentration of publications from Egypt highlights regional strengths but constrains the representativeness of Arab scholarship more broadly.
Originality/value
This research is the initial systematic bibliometric analysis of MSAR and a structured analysis of how it has developed intellectually, networks of collaboration and what thematic issues it has undergone. The study identifies the emerging role of MSAR as a sustainability and management scholarship site in the Arab and the Middle East and North Africa worlds by revealing the research patterns of the journal and its regional involvement.