Circular economy and fashion industry: Drawing a scientific map of international research in the reference database Web of Science

The clothing and textile industry has a significant contribution to global environmental pollution at every stage of the supply chain, for this reason, there is a need to move from a linear approach to a circular approach in the textile-fashion industry. The circular economy is one of the most important and challenging issues in the present era, and since the re-creation of textile products has gained special importance in the world, studies on the circular economy and the fashion industry are expanding, so current research aims to Review of the general trend and determination of research interests in the field of circular economy and fashion industry and optimal guidance of future researches in this field were done. This research is quantitative in terms of matter and practical in terms of purpose, and it is descriptive in terms of the type of data collection and uses the scientometric method for data analysis. Based on this statistical population, the number of 270 articles on circular economy and fashion industry, extracted from the Web of Science database from 2017 to 2023, have been used as input data of VOSviewer software to examine and analyze researchal production process, a knowledge map, the conceptual network and the lexical network of circular economy researches and fashion industry. The network of countries that are active in this field shows that advanced countries are leaders in the field of circular economy researches and the fashion industry and the time trend of researches shows that researches in the field of circular economy and fashion industry is increasing. This research helps the manufacturers of the clothing industry to identify the trend of changes in global markets towards the circular economy and to take steps in the direction of the circular fashion and clothing industry.