Food cold chain management: What we know and what we deserve

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a quantitatively supported explanation of the intellectual development, the schools of thought and the sub-areas of food cold chain (FCC) research to derive meaningful avenues for future research. Methodology: This study builds on bibliometric analysis and network analysis to systematically evaluate a sample of 1,189 FCC articles published over the last 25 years. The descriptive statistics and science mapping approaches using co-citation analysis were performed with VOSviewer software. Findings: The findings reveal a state-of-the-art overview of the top contributing and influential countries, authors, institutions, and articles in the area of FCC research. A co-citation analysis, coupled with content analysis of most co-cited articles, uncovered four underlying research streams including: 1) application of RFID technologies; 2) production and operation planning models; 3) postharvest waste, causes of postharvest wastage and perishable inventory ordering polices and models; and 4) critical issues in FCC. Current research streams, clusters and their sub-themes provided meaningful discussions and insights into key areas for future research in FCC. Originality: This study might reshape practitioners’, researchers’, and policy-makers’ views on the multifaceted areas and themes in the FCC research field, to harness the benefits from FCC both at a tactical and at a strategic level. Finally, the research findings offer a roadmap for additional research to yield more practical and modeling insights that are much needed to enrich the field.