*2.2. Data Collection and Collation*

Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus are the preferred databases for researchers conducting bibliometric analysis. Since the WoS database contains extensive literature in engineering, social science, medicine, management, philosophy and other disciplines, it is chosen as the database to select research data. The search terms in this study are "sustainability OR sustainable development" and "construction waste\* OR C&D OR construction waste management OR demolition waste\* OR decoration and renovation waste management", and the literature language in the data was restricted to English at the same time. By comparing the search results of all databases and core collections of WoS, it is found that although the former published articles earlier (since 1994), the eight articles published between 1994 and 2001 are mainly early explorations on the sustainable development of construction waste and resources, with little impact on the identification of current hot spots and trends. Meanwhile, the literature in the core collection of WoS is groundbreaking and of high quality in terms of construction waste [49,50]; therefore, the original data of 3550 publications selected in this study are all from it, including research articles, review articles, proceedings papers, data papers and early access, and excluding editorial materials, letters and book reviews.

#### **3. Results**

#### *3.1. Analysis of Publications*

Quantitative distribution data for articles published on C&D waste and the sustainable development of resources are analyzed by Citespace, as shown in Figure 1. Among them, the countries with the highest number of publications are specially shown in stacked columns. The broken line in the figure represents the cumulative number of publications in the field, which reflects the development status of research results in this field from 2002 to 2022. It can be found by analyzing the broken line that the first article was published in 2002, and the number of published articles was less than 25 for six consecutive years, with slow growth. In 2016, the number of annual publications exceeded 100 for the first time, and academia became more and more interested in this field. In 2022, more than 700 articles were published, making the research more diversified. Thus, according to the above research results, the research progress since 2002 can be roughly divided into three parts: the exploration phase (2002–2007), the initial growth phase (2008–2015) and the rapid development phase (2016–2022).

At the same time, the stacked columns also presented the research status in the field of C&D waste and the sustainable development of resources among countries. It can be seen that China's development in this field shows an exponential growth trend, while India and Brazil grew very slowly in the early stage, until they became active in 2018. Related research in the United States and Australia has developed steadily, while studies in Malaysia, Italy and other countries have shown fluctuating growth.

Table 1 lists the 10 most productive journals. The number of publications of *Journal of Cleaner Production* (11.414%) ranks first, which shows its high influential status, followed by *Sustainability* (8.012%), *Construction and Building Materials* (7.787%), *Materials* (2.952%) and *Resources Conservation and Recycling* (2.839%). Obviously, preservation of the environment, building materials, and sustainable development are the core themes of the top 10 most productive publications. This shows that researchers' journal selection is relatively simple, and we can pay more attention to these journals to track the research frontiers and hot articles in the field of C&D waste and the sustainable development of resources.


**Table 1.** The proportion of published journals.
