The interconnectivity of ESG research within the realm of sustainability: A bibliometric analysis

Motivation: The relationship between ESG factors and sustainability is a widely debated topic in the literature, but to our knowledge, there is a gap concerning the investigation of links between groups formed with ESG and other sustainability concepts, such as corporate social responsibility (CSR), green economy, circular economy, digitalization, technology, industry 4.0, and industry 5.0. Idea : The objective of this study is to identify the interest of researchers, their visibility, as well as the trends among publications, regarding the ESG factors in relation to other concepts within the realm of sustainability, like CSR, green economy, circular economy, digitalization, technology, industry 4.0, and industry 5.0. Data: The selected sample for the research includes 1430 papers screened from the Web of Science database. Tools: The aim of this study is achieved by conducting a bibliometric analysis, using VOSviewer and PowerBI. Findings: The findings of this study include the interconnectivity of selected concepts, the co-occurrence of authors’ keywords, the number of publications over time, as well as the paper types, the publishing activity by journal, the most productive authors, the co-authorship, their affiliation, the papers’ length, references, and citations trend, the most cited papers, the publishing activity by country and the collaboration patterns between countries. Contribution: This analysis supports the identification of potential gaps in current ESG-related research and points toward new areas of investigation. It also contributes to the advancement of ESG research and to the achievement of sustainable development goals.


Introduction
Over recent decades, concern has grown about the issue of climate change, which is becoming more pressing each day, as environmental awareness becomes more widespread (Duan, 2023;Dube & Nhamo, 2020).The United Nations formulated 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) (Hamdy et al., 2018), specifically addressing climate change, environmental degradation, and social inequality (Lee et al., 2022).Within the context presented, it is crucial to assess the sustainability and social responsibility of business, and an approach to this evaluation is through the application of ESG criteria (Clement et al., 2022).ESG are data-driven components of sustainability that highlight an organization's performance in three domains: environment, society, and governance (Khan & Liu, 2023;Senadheera et al., 2022).Businesses shift toward sustainable practices by incorporating ESG elements, reducing risks, and leveraging opportunities that support long-term sustainability objectives (Palmieri et al., 2024;Jiang et al., 2023b).
Despite the numerous bibliometric analysis papers published on ESG topic, such as Zhao et al. (2023b), Steblianskaia et al. (2023), Khan (2022), Senadheera et al. (2022), and Gao et al. (2021), according to our knowledge, there is a gap concerning the investigation of links between groups formed with ESG and other sustainability concepts, such as CSR, green economy, circular economy, digitalization, technology, industry 4.0, and industry 5.0.Identifying new patterns in publications and journal performance, collaboration patterns, and investigating the intellectual structure of the presented topic in the existing literature are some of the primary reasons to undertake a bibliometric analysis (Donthu et al., 2021).
Advancing the relevance of conducting a bibliometric analysis, the objective of this paper is developed based on six main research questions, focused on the ESG factors in relation to other concepts within the realm of sustainability, such as CSR, green economy, circular economy, digitalization, technology, industry 4.0, and industry 5.0.To achieve this aim, 1430 papers were selected from the Web of Science database, which is a worldwide recognized database, covering many journals and international conferences (Lungu et al., 2020).The applied methodology is divided into four steps, as presented by Donthu et al. (2021).
The results and the key characteristics in the selected area of research are highlighted through various analyses of the dataset, using descriptive and frequency analysis, and two software tools for visual representation -VOSviewer and PowerBI.Therefore, the findings include the interconnectivity of selected concepts, the number of publications over time, as well as the paper types, the publishing activity by country and the collaboration patterns between countries, the publishing activity by journal, the most productive authors, and the co-authorship, the length, references, and citations trends, the most cited papers, and the co-occurrence of authors' keywords.We also analyzed the authors' affiliations, particularly those associated with Romanian universities, in order to determine the level of interest that local scholars have in the studied topic.These analyses provide insights into the characteristics of the research landscape related to the chosen subject and help identify key trends and patterns.It also supports the identification of potential gaps in current ESG-related studies and points toward new areas of investigation.Moreover, it contributes to the advancement of ESG research and the achievement of sustainable development goals.This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 includes an overview of ESG factors in relation to other concepts within the realm of sustainability, such as CSR, green economy, circular economy, digitalization, technology, industry 4.0, and industry 5.0.In Section 3, the key methodological steps of the bibliometric analysis are described.Section 4 highlights the research findings, while the conclusions of this study are covered in Section 5.

Literature review and research questions
Earth is currently facing unprecedented social and climate difficulties, and the science behind climate change is becoming increasingly alarmist (Clement et al., 2022;Senadheera et al., 2021).In the contemporary context, the concept of sustainability has become a critical concern in different fields, which represents a paradigm shift in how global challenges are addressed (Ghazanfari, 2023;Rodriguez-Gonzalez, 2018).
Sustainability covers a comprehensive framework that addresses the complex connections among ecological-economical-social perspectives, in order to accelerate the transition to equitable, resilient, and ethical societies (Marandure et al., 2020;Zabaniotou et al., 2020).Its importance resides not only in reducing the impact on the environment, but also in incorporating practices that promote long-term ecological preservation, social well-being, and economic development (Su et al., 2023).In this context, companies define strategies with the aim of creating value in the short, medium, and long term.Thus, the role of companies is not limited to profitmaking only.Consequently, the attention shifts from shareholders to all stakeholders, and from financial reporting to the inclusion of non-financial information in corporate reporting (Caraiani et al., 2015).The modern business landscape is designed by an interaction of concepts, such as ESG, sustainability, corporate social responsibility, green economy, circular economy, digitalization, technology, industry 4.0, and industry 5.0., that drives ethical conduct, sustainable growth, and responsible decision-making (Jiang et al., 2023;Wamane, 2023;Zhou & Liu, 2023;Kambe & Tamamura, 2022;Mourtzis et al., 2022).
It is necessary for academics, managers, and investors to have a system to classify companies as socially responsible organizations based on a variety of criteria.Given the difficulty of measuring social and environmental challenges, ESG scores are an approach that is frequently used (Clement et al., 2022).Although the development of ESG scores may seem like a superficial step, it is one of the critical reforms in shaping sustainable business environments (Khan, 2022).Senadheera et al. (2022) argue that organizations with better ESG performance are more likely to be sustainable in relation to their own objectives and strategies.Furthermore, investors and other stakeholders have begun to pay much more attention to ESG scores.Unlike Senadheera et al. (2022), who refer to the absolute values of ESG scores, Uyar et al. (2022) argue that not only these values should be analyzed, but also the variations of the indicators, as inconsistency may harm organizations, even if the scores are high.On the other hand, Abrudan et al. (2021) indirectly support an inversely proportional relationship between companies with high ESG scores and investor interest.To facilitate the understanding of the actions behind this analysis, Galucci et al. (2022) advocate for the need to increase transparency levels in the methodology for calculating the indicators.
Sustainability is built on ESG elements, which constitute a connection between responsible business practices and the broader purpose of preserving the world (Dash & Mohanty, 2023;Rajesh, 2020).By highlighting the need for environmental responsibility, ethical behavior, and effective governance practices, ESG principles serve as a map that guides organizations towards sustainability (Liao et al., 2023;Nogueira et al., 2018).Incorporating ESG into corporate operations not only ensures compliance and risk mitigation, but also brings an innovation culture into business activities (Khan & Liu, 2023;Jin & Kim, 2022).The importance of ESG in the business landscape may not be overstated (David et al., 2023).It represents a fundamental shift in how companies perceive their role in society and the environment, driving a paradigm that recognizes the relationship between business success and societal well-being (Babkin et al., 2023;Silva, 2023).The shared vision of ESG and sustainability is to build a future where businesses succeed while preserving the environment and its people for future generations (Chung et al., 2023;Izgarova et al., 2023).Sustainable development and ESG principles have a strong connection with the economic strength of businesses (Senadheera et al., 2022).
In a sustainable environment, CSR generally refers to a company's commitment to contribute to societal, economic and environmental well-being through business practices and activities, which may enhance the reputation and brand of the company, create consumer loyalty, and achieve better financial performance (Alekneviciene, 2023;Chen et al., 2023).It represents a company practice that aims to significantly improve society rather than just maximize profits (Torres et al., 2023;Hamada, 2022).CSR covers a wide range of topics, including philanthropy, environmental protection, labor rights, and community participation (Kasim et al., 2022;Hui-Wen Chuah et al., 2022).By helping local communities, making investments in healthcare and education, or encouraging diversity and inclusion, businesses that participate in CSR aim to align their core values with actions that benefit society (Bastillo-Castillejo et al., 2023;Torres et al., 2023).
Through the alignment of ethical, social, and environmental values, CSR efforts support an organization's larger ESG aims (Chouaibi & Zouari, 2022;Chouaibi & Chouaibi, 2021).Business models that encourage decentralization and the development of circular value in goods and services make sustainability and CSR possible (Upadhyay et al., 2021).Therefore, for companies to make circular economy initiatives a competitive advantage, they need to work on two things at once: changing how they do things now to reduce waste and using this approach to boost their main businesses (Fatimah et al., 2023;Mondal et al., 2023;Wamane, 2023).The circular economy is a framework for business models that, in order to achieve sustainable development, which includes improving the environment and promoting social equity, replace the idea of end-of-life with reducing, reusing, recycling, and recovering resources in production and distribution processes (Figge et al., 2022).
The adoption of ESG supports environmentally conscious projects, sustainable technologies and encourages investment in renewable resources, all of which contribute to the expansion of the green economy (Roy, 2023;Zhou & Liu, 2023).The green economy, highlighted as an important pillar in economic and environmental development (Lee et al., 2022), is analyzed from three perspectives: conceptual, implementation, and quantification of its implementation results.The conceptual perspective is defined by formulating strategies, creating policies, and elaborating development programs.From the implementation perspective, the green economy includes elements such as sustainable products and services, sustainable management, and sustainable jobs.In the third perspective, the United Nations Environment Programme has established three sets of indicators: environmental (climate change, natural resources, waste), policy (investment, fiscal reforms, ecosystems, educational programs), and social (jobs, access to resources, welfare, health) (Adamowicz, 2022).Sustainable growth in the green economy is fueled by ESG principles, which promote an optimal balance between profit, environment, and people (Wang et al., 2024;Hu et al., 2023;Khan & Liu, 2023).
Through the integration of ESG principles with the potential of digitization, technology is developing responsibly, prioritizing environmental conservation, and enhancing social welfare (Zhou & Liu, 2023;Zhang & Jin, 2022).By enabling more effective resource usage (e.g., optimizing energy consumption), decreasing waste, and lowering emissions, digitalization may play a critical role in accomplishing sustainability goals (Peng et al., 2023;Lange et al., 2020).Better living conditions, active public participation, ethical governance, and transparency in public welfare programs and processes are all benefits of digitalization (Xu et al., 2021).In the age of the digital economy, digital technology opens up new avenues for business growth, while businesses' potential and degree of development are determined by how far they have digitally transformed (Lu et al., 2023;Zhao et al., 2023).
Innovative technologies are used in sustainable business models to increase resource efficiency, reduce environmental effects throughout the product life cycle, preserve energy, cut emissions, optimize industrial structures, and spread the sustainability of business processes (Li & Liu, 2023;Qian et al., 2023;Upadhyay et al., 2021).Thanks to its potential to promote innovation while encouraging environmentally beneficial practices across industries, technology is a key factor towards sustainability (Salamzadeh et al., 2022).Digitalized manufacturing equipment and information and communication technologies are examples of smart technologies that may benefit the environment by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, for example (Saunila et al., 2019).As a result of ongoing research and development, technology is becoming an increasingly efficient tool for promoting positive transformation and an environmentally conscious society in search of a more sustainable future (Qian et al., 2023;Costa et al., 2022).They also enable companies to anticipate future customer behaviors, by using past or current behavioral patterns as the foundation for their strategic decisions (Anica-Popa et al., 2021).Due to the revolutionary impact of Industry 4.0, business models have been transformed with a focus on innovation, restoration, and the integration of digital technology (Abu-Bakar et al., 2023;Fatimah et al., 2023).This supports a circular economy with improved resource efficiency as a core business orientation (Phiri et al., 2022).
Digital technologies are the foundation of the competitive business landscapes in I4.0 (Govindan, 2023).Given the current importance of human-centeredness, resilience, and sustainability, the emerging technologies created under I4.0 are intended to better satisfy industrial and technological goals without compromising socio-economic and environmental performance, which has led to the emergence of I5.0 (Asif et al., 2023;Xu et al., 2021).Researchers have highlighted various innovative technologies, which transform business models, including artificial intelligence, blockchain, the Internet of Things, digital voice assistants, business intelligence and virtual reality (Saxena et al., 2023;Cavalcanti et al., 2022;Upadhyay et al., 2021;Chen & Bellavitis, 2020).Industry 5.0 underscores three aspects of development: a focus on human-centered, sustainable, and resilient development (Grabowska et al., 2022).This evolution represents a synergy between technological, social, and ecological realms, constituting the core of Industry 5.0 (Ghobakhloo et al., 2022;Pillai et al., 2021).It leverages technologies to enhance workplace safety and human-machine relationships, integrating corporate and social responsibilities with respect to the environment and society (Jafari et al., 2022).
In line with previous studies, to cover the gaps in research on interconnectivity of ESG factors within the realm of sustainability, such as CSR, green economy, circular The influences on Activity-Based Costing adoption as an optimal costing system design: Evidence from Saudi Arabia The sub-questions are meant to better clarify the details addressed by the main research questions.

Methodology
The aim of this study is achieved by conducting a bibliometric analysis, which includes a performance identification that assesses the productivity and impact of various research elements, such as paper types, countries, authors, citations, journals, and keywords.In addition to these traditional bibliometric analysis techniques, this study also uses advanced enhancement techniques, such as visualization.Donthu et al. (2021) present four steps that must be followed to conduct a bibliometric analysis: (1) defining the aims and scope, (2) choosing the techniques, (3) collecting the data from a bibliometric database, and (4) conducting the bibliometric analysis and reporting the findings.
Step 1: Defining the aim and scope of the bibliometric study.The objective of this study is to identify the interest of researchers, their visibility, as well as the trends among publications, regarding the ESG factors in relation to other concepts within the realm of sustainability.These concepts are CSR, green economy, circular economy, digitalization, technology, industry 4.0, and industry 5.0.The characteristics of ESG-related research, such as length, citation, references, and number of authors were also assessed.Additionally, the analysis examines the collaboration patterns among authors and institutions, and it also identifies potential opportunities for future work in ESG-related areas.Moreover, this paper contributes to the advancement of ESG research by providing valuable insights into the literature landscape of this field.
Step 2: Choosing the techniques for the bibliometric analysis.To answer the research questions, the study employs various techniques, including performance analysis and science mapping, such as citation analysis, co-citation analysis, co-word analysis, and co-authorship analysis.The performance analysis assesses the productivity and impacts the publications in the ESG research field.Science mapping techniques enable the identification of the most productive authors and journals.Furthermore, the citation, co-citation, co-word, and co-authorship analyses facilitate the exploration of the interrelationships and connections among publications and researchers focused on ESG topics.These techniques are widely utilized in bibliometric studies and have shown effectiveness in providing valuable insights into the research trends and performance in the field of ESG research (Jain & Tripathi, 2023;Khan, 2022).
Step 3: Collecting data for bibliometric analysis.The third step is to collect the data needed for the bibliometric analysis techniques selected in the second step (Donthu et al., 2021).Thus, the search terms were defined in a way that relates to the broad and general themes of the concepts analyzed, but at the same time was focused enough to stay within the research area defined in the first step (Lungu et al., 2020).The chosen search terms are ESG, sustainability, CSR, green economy, circular economy, digitalization, technology, industry 4.0, and industry 5.0.The Web of Science searches were generated by combining selected terms as follows: ESG and Sustainability, ESG and CSR, ESG and Green economy, ESG and Circular economy, ESG and Digitalization, ESG and Technology, ESG and Industry 4.0, and ESG and Industry 5.0.(Alsmadi & Alzoubi, 2022;Ellili, 2022;He et al., 2022).These chosen combinations of words allow one to determine any paper that addressed the studied associations.
Data are collected from the Web of Science Core Collection bibliographic and bibliometric database.Web of Science is a platform that brings together diverse and specialized information, enabling users to monitor the evolution of concepts across various disciplines.Clarivate Analytics manages this database, which includes many respected journals and conferences subject to rigorous international and national peer review (Lungu et al., 2020).No specific time frame was established as the intention was to observe the complete evolution of the research area over time, thereby facilitating the formulation of comprehensive conclusions.
Table 1 presents all the steps that were followed in the data cleaning process, with the aim that the final sample consists only of papers relevant to the research objective.

Final sample 1430
The preliminary search generated 2611 studies.To assess their alignment with the research topic, an Excel file was created to record all available data on the selected papers.After the removal of duplicates, 491 articles were eliminated.Furthermore, an English language criterion was applied, excluding 22 non-English studies.To narrow the scope, out of 226 research areas, only 97 were selected, generating an exclusion of 223 papers.Research areas not taken into account included chemistry, criminology, geography, construction, medicine, architecture, and other domains not related to the scope of our study.To ensure the relevance of the selected studies, the following analysis was conducted on the abstracts.Out of 1875 papers, 41 lacked accessible abstracts in the Web of Science database and were manually searched for on the Internet.This step recovered 14 missing abstracts, while the remaining could not be identified.Therefore, the sample was reduced to 1848 papers.To further refine the selected articles, an Excel filter was applied, to identify the abstracts mentioning the ESG term.This criterion showed that out of 1848 papers, included ESG in their abstracts, while 604 did not.Although 1244 studies mentioned ESG, 109 articles were eliminated because the acronym was used for concepts not relevant to the research topic, such as: Earth System Grid (ESG), electrostatic gyroscopes (ESG), Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG), early sudden gains (ESG), early seedling growth (ESG), etc.For the 604 papers that did not contain the ESG term, another condition was applied to emphasize those that included at least one of the following three terms: environment, social, and governance.Of these, articles were taken into consideration, due to the fact that the abstract incorporated at least one of the selected terms.Finally, the papers' exclusion and inclusion methodology generated a sample of 1430 studies.
Step 4: Conducting the bibliometric analysis and reporting the findings.The results and key characteristics in the selected area summarize the performance of the research constituents, such as authors, countries, and journals, using the total number of publications, citations, and references.Moreover, different techniques for science mapping are used, such as citation analysis, co-authorship analysis, and co-word analysis.Enhancement methods, such as clustering and visualization, are explored by using Microsoft Excel, VOSviewer, and PowerBI.

Analysis based on the interconnectivity of concepts and authors' keywords
The total number of studies that resulted from the initial search for the prescribed keyword combinations was 2611.Due to the interconnection of the analyzed terms, 491 duplicates were found.These duplicates underwent a separate analysis aimed at determining how many of the chosen concepts were linked within the specialized literature.A visual representation of this analysis is shown in Figure 1.Furthermore, a co-occurrence analysis of the authors' keywords was carried out in the VOSviewer, which is shown in Figure 2. Throughout this analysis, it is possible to observe not only the clusters formed, representing the words' interconnectivity in the selected papers, but we may also establish which of the analyzed concepts (ESG, sustainability, CSR, green economy, circular economy, digitalization, technology, industry 4.0, and industry 5.0.) for this research were utilized as keywords in the final sample.According to VOSviewer, the three major co-occurrences are around the concepts of ESG (368 occurrences) and sustainability (184 occurrences) in yellow, and CSR (304 occurrences) in red.To obtain a clearer overview, a minimum threshold of 25 occurrences was applied for the displayed keywords.Of the nine selected concepts, ESG, CSR, and sustainability are also used as authors' keywords.

Analysis based on the number of publications and paper types
Scholars have only recently begun to investigate ESG criteria as data-driven aspects of sustainability due to its relatively new terminology, which was first introduced in the United Nations Who Cares Wins report in 2004 (Senadheera et al., 2022).Figure 3 presents a graphic illustration of the evolution of the number of papers published in the ESG sphere in relation to the selected concepts.The first study that met the search and exclusion criteria described in the methodology is Kocmanova and Nemecek (2009), which explores the evaluation of a company's performance by measuring the integration of economic, environmental, and social issues, and corporate governance.Although the trend has been consistently increasing since the publication of the first paper, it may be observed that starting from 2020, the number of such papers has almost doubled annually.This highlights the growing interest among academics in analyzing ESG factors in relation to other concepts within the realm of sustainability.The peak was reached in 2022, most likely because of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has grown the attention to the importance of environmental, social, and governance factors in the corporate world.As a result, there has been an increased interest in ESG research, as investors seek to align their portfolios with companies that prioritize sustainability (Vineis & Mangone, 2022).

Figure 3. Yearly and cumulative number of identified papers
The following analysis is based on the number of published papers according to their type: article, book chapter, editorial material, letter, proceedings paper, and review, as presented in Table 2.

Number of papers Cumulative number of papers
The influences on Activity-Based Costing adoption as an optimal costing system design: Evidence from Saudi Arabia The selection or exclusion of papers from the final sample was not performed based on the type of paper and, therefore, these categories were not deliberately chosen.Consequently, the available papers within the Web of Science database that conform to the research methodology have been delimited by these categories.The category with the highest number of publications is Article, which accounts for 87.13% of the total.The following categories, Proceedings Paper and Review, have considerably smaller shares, collectively representing nearly 10% of the total number of papers.The analysis of articles reveals a threefold increase in their number in 2022 compared to the previous year.This trend indicates a significantly higher interest among academics and journals in this area.

Analysis of the publishing activity by journals
Across 457 publications, 1430 papers were identified.The top 10 highest-ranked journals, based on the number of articles on the topic of ESG, are presented in Table 3, including their research area and impact factor for 2022.The most prominent journal in this field is Sustainability (277 papers), with an impact factor of 3.9, being specialized in two research areas -Science & Technology -Other Topics and Environmental Sciences & Ecology.The following journals are Business Strategy and the Environment (51 papers) and Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management (51 papers).As may be observed, there is a substantial difference between the highest-ranked journal, which accounts for nearly 20% of all papers, and the other journals included in this top.Furthermore, Business Strategy and the Environment leads in terms of the journals with the highest impact factor (13.4), closely followed by the Journal of Cleaner Production, with an impact factor of 11.1, and Finance Research Letters, with an impact factor of 10.4, according to the specific information collected from each publication's records stats.Although Sustainability has the highest volume of published papers, its impact factor is significantly lower (3.9).Among the top-performing journals, research areas Environmental Sciences & Ecology and Business & Economics include six journals each, while Science & Technology -Other Topics is associated with three journals.Buallay Amina is not only the author with the highest productivity, but she also has the highest degree of involvement in collaborative efforts.This outcome was anticipated, as Table 4 reveals that out of a total of 17 publications, Buallay Amina is a single author for 6 papers, while the remaining 11 papers involve collaborations with other authors.
The following analysis was performed taking into account the characteristics of authors' affiliations, utilizing the frequency analysis technique.Table 5 provides a detailed breakdown of various characteristics of the papers, such as the authors' affiliations, which are presented in terms of the number of papers, the number of authors, and the collaborations between authors affiliated with Romanian universities and those affiliated with international universities.Among the 1430 papers that were published, only a small proportion of them, namely 43 papers (3.01%), feature at least one author affiliated with a university in Romania.
Of these, 35 articles (2.45%) have their first author affiliated with a Romanian university, while the remaining 8 articles (0.56%) are the result of collaborations between authors affiliated with Romanian and international universities.Furthermore, the average number of authors per article is 2.94, with the highest number of authors for a single article being 16.

Analysis of paper length, references, and citation trends
To evaluate the length and quality of the papers, the number of pages, as well as the number of references and citations extracted from the WoS analytics database for each paper were taken into consideration.The resultant data are shown in Table 6.Among the 1430 articles that were analyzed, which altogether had a citation count of 19,763, it was observed that the top 10 most frequently cited articles contribute to 3067 citations.More details are provided in Table 7.
The article Corporate Social Responsibility and Access to Finance authored by Cheng et al. (2014) has the highest number of citations among the selected literature, signifying its importance in the field.Given that it was published in 2014, it was expected to have a substantial total citation count, which was indeed observed.It also stands out as having the highest average annual citation count, underscoring its significant influence on the field of study.The influences on Activity-Based Costing adoption as an optimal costing system design: Evidence from Saudi Arabia To better comprehend a research subject in relation to citation trends, Chuang et al. (2007) proposed an association between the number of citations and the publication life.The trend of this relationship is illustrated in Figure 5, where the publication life is the age of the article from the time of its publication to the date of data extraction. . is most commonly cited in its ninth year of publication, with a variable trend after that.Up to the sixth year of publication, there is a consistent growth in citations per research.While the publication length influences the number of citations, it also serves as a metric for evaluating the visibility of a paper.

Analysis of the publishing activity by country and continent
The use of ESG indicators has generated significant scholarly interest, and authors affiliated with institutions in 87 countries around the world contribute to this area of research.Figure 6 illustrates the distribution of papers considering the country of institutions that authors are affiliated with, using the PowerBI software.The selected topic is one that is of global interest, and most publications come from Europe (65.24%).This is followed by Asia (42.17%),North America (20.84%),Oceania (6.57%), Africa (4.34%), and South America (2.87%).Next, Table 8 displays the 15 main countries in terms of the number of published papers.The United States of America occupies the first position with 212 articles, representing 14.83% of the total.Following the US, China, and the United Kingdom The influences on Activity-Based Costing adoption as an optimal costing system design: Evidence from Saudi Arabia rank second and third with 168 (11.75%) and 159 (11.12%) articles, respectively.In particular, Romania is ranked 13th with 43 articles, which represents 3.01% of the total of articles identified in the Web of Science database.
Moreover, Figure 7 presents an overview of the co-authorship across different nations.The graphical representation facilitates the detection of collaborative efforts among various countries.

Discussion and conclusion
This paper provides an overview of the state of research in the field of ESG factors in relation to other concepts within the realm of sustainability, such as CSR, green economy, circular economy, digitalization, technology, industry 4.0, and industry 5.0.Using a bibliometric analysis, this study explores the available papers that are indexed in Web of Science database.Although the initial search generated 2611 results, after the elimination of duplicates and the application of the exclusion criteria described in the methodology, a number of 1430 papers were included in the analysis.
The results and the key characteristics in the selected area of research are highlighted through various analyses of the final sample, using descriptive and frequency analysis, and two software tools for visual representation -VOSviewer and PowerBI.Therefore, the findings answer the six research questions, including various analyses, such as the interconnectivity of selected concepts, the cooccurrence of authors' keywords, the number of publications over time, as well as the paper types, the publishing activity by journal, the most productive authors, the co-authorship, their affiliation, the papers' length, references, and citations trend, the most cited papers, the publishing activity by country and the collaboration patterns between countries.The influences on Activity-Based Costing adoption as an optimal costing system design: Evidence from Saudi Arabia Considering the fourth research question -What general characteristics have the papers' authors within the analyzed topic?, Amina Buallay, who is affiliated with both a university in Bahrain and one in the United Kingdom, is the most productive author (17 papers).She is also the author of most collaborations (11 papers).In terms of the authors' affiliation, among the 1430 papers that were published, only a small proportion of them, namely 43 papers (3.01%), feature at least one author who is affiliated with a university in Romania.Additionally, the highest number of authors for a single article is 16, and the average number of authors per research is 2.94.
Regarding Finally, as per sixth research question -Which countries and continents are the most productive in the field of research and which are their collaboration patterns?, the three most productive nations in the chosen field are the USA, China, and the UK.The analysis also reveals that each country forms a distinct cluster when it comes to the authors' cooperation, with collaboration between these three countries being avoided.
To examine the interconnection between the chosen ideas, a meta-analysis of the publications mentioned in Figure 1 could be a future research direction.The potential future paper could analyze the similarities and differences between the two studied groups of the concepts within the realm of sustainability (1) CSR, Green economy, Circular economy and (2) Digitalization, Technology, Industry 4.0, and Industry 5.0.Another potential research direction involves investigating the connection between sustainability and technological advancements, specifically, which technologies are integrated into sustainable business models and how they are transforming the business environment.
Given the wide spectrum of the sustainability field and the ever-changing business landscape, our study had to limit its scope to the selected concepts, since it would be impossible to include all potential terms in a single study.Additionally, rapid technological advances and the emergence of innovative concepts constitute another limitation, as new ideas are continually developed, thereby not included in our paper.
Moreover, limiting our research to the Web of Science database creates challenges in highlighting broader study findings.
Initially, the word combinations were segregated into two groups: (1) ESG and Sustainability, ESG and Green economy, ESG and Circular economy, and ESG and CSR, and (2) ESG and Digitalization, ESG and Technology, ESG and Industry 5.0, and ESG and Industry 4.0.Regarding the first group, it is noteworthy that out of the total number of articles, only one addresses all the selected concepts simultaneously.Four articles analyze the connection between ESG and Sustainability, ESG and Green economy, and ESG and CSR; seven articles examine the concepts of ESG and Sustainability, ESG and Green economy, and ESG and Circular economy; two articles investigate the concepts of ESG and Sustainability, ESG and Circular economy, and ESG and CSR, while one article examines the concepts of ESG and Green economy, ESG and Circular economy, and ESG and CSR.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Graphical representation of the analyzed concepts' interconnectivity

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Co-occurrence analysis of author keywords

Figure 5 .
Figure 5. Citation trend visual representation According to Figure 5, a paper addressing ESG factors in relation to other concepts within the realm of sustainability, like CSR, green economy, circular economy, digitalization, technology, industry 4.0, or industry 5.0. is most commonly cited in its ninth year of publication, with a variable trend after that.Up to the sixth year of publication, there is a consistent growth in citations per research.While the publication length influences the number of citations, it also serves as a metric for evaluating the visibility of a paper.

Figure 6 .
Figure 6.PowerBI map of publishing countries

Figure 7 .
Figure 7. Network analysis of co-authorship based on countries economy, digitalization, technology, industry 4.0, and industry 5.0, this article addresses six main research questions.RQ1.How are the analyzed concepts in the scientific literature interconnected and which keywords do authors commonly employ?RQ2.How has research on ESG factors in relation to other concepts within the realm of sustainability developed over the years?RQ3.Which are the leading journals in the studied research topic?Who are the most productive?RQ5.What general characteristics have the papers within the analyzed topic?RQ5.1.How may the papers be characterized in terms of general features?RQ5.2.Which are the most cited studies?RQ5.3.How has the citation trend changed over the years?RQ6.Which countries and continents are the most productive in the field of research and which are their collaboration patterns?

Table 7 . Top 10 most cited papers
*until February 2023

Table 8 . Top 15 publishing countries on ESG Countries Number of papers Frequency
Among the identified results, regarding the first research question -How are the analyzed concepts in the scientific literature interconnected and which keywords do authors commonly employ?, it is noteworthy that a single article analyzes simultaneously the concepts of ESG and Sustainability, ESG and CSR, ESG and Green economy, ESG and Circular economy, while no article simultaneously treats the concepts ESG and Digitalization, ESG and Technology, ESG and Industry 4.0, and ESG and Industry 5.0.It is also worth noting that 273 papers, i.e. 19.09% of the total, contain studies on ESG in correlation with concepts from the technical area under consideration: digitization, technology, industry 4.0, and industry 5.0.The most often used keywords by the authors are ESG (368 occurrences), CSR (304 occurrences), and sustainability (184 occurrences).Out of the nine selected concepts, ESG, CSR, and sustainability are also employed as authors' keywords.This analysis assists in the identification of potential gaps in current ESG-related research and points to new study topics.As for the second question -How has research on ESG factors in relation to other concepts within the realm of sustainability developed over the years?, the peak in terms of publications was reached in 2022, when 41.82% of all papers identified in Web of Science as pertinent to the research topic were authored.Most probably, this happened because of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has drawn attention to the importance of environmental, social and governance factors in the corporate world.Regarding the type of publications, the top-ranked category is Article, which represents 87.13% of the total.Answering the third research question -Which are the leading journals in the studied research topic?, Sustainability, Business Strategy and the Environment, and Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management stand out as the top three most prolific publications.Business Strategy and the Environment leads in terms of the journals with the highest impact factor (13.4).Although Sustainability has the highest volume of published papers (277 papers), its impact factor is significantly lower (3.9).The most studied research areas within the top publications are Environmental Sciences & Ecology and Business & Technology.
the fifth research question -What general characteristics have the papers within the analyzed topic?, it is reported that the publications have, on average, 18.71 pages, 69.03 references, and 13.82 citations per work.The most cited article is Corporate Social Responsibility and Access to Finance, authored by Cheng et al. (2014) and published by Strategic Management Journal, having 1220 citations, with an average of 152.5 citations per year.A paper addressing the ESG factors in relation to other concepts within the realm of sustainability, like CSR, green economy, circular economy, digitalization, technology, industry 4.0, or industry 5.0. is most commonly cited in its ninth year of publication, with a variable trend after that.