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Walking Through the Scientific Landscape of Occupational Burnout Research: A Bibliometric Analysis (2000–2025): History
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Contributor: Chaima ElHichou-Ahmed , Pedro R. Gil-Monte , Hugo Figueiredo-Ferraz

Occupational burnout has become a major topic in occupational health psychology because of its implications for employee well-being, mental health, and organizational functioning. Although the scientific literature has grown steadily, the field still requires an integrated picture of its development, collaboration patterns, and thematic structure. This study examined the evolution, collaboration patterns and thematic structure of occupational burnout research through a bibliometric analysis of publications indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection between 2000 and 2025. A total of 3227 publications were retrieved using a topic-based search focused specifically on occupational burnout terminology. Bibliometric analyses used VOSviewer to map and visualize trends in scientific production, co-authorship networks, country/region collaboration, keyword co-occurrence, and journal citation patterns. The findings indicate an accelerating increase in publication output, from 17 publications in 2000 to 454 in 2025. The period 2020–2025 alone accounted for 2142 publications, representing 66.4% of the corpus. Collaboration analyses revealed an increasingly international field involving 122 countries/regions, with the United States occupying a highly connected position and collaboration clusters emerging in Europe and Asia. Spain also appeared to connect European and Latin American research communities. Thematic mapping showed that burnout is closely associated with organizational variables, psychological distress, healthcare settings, and measurement-related issues. Overall, occupational burnout research has become an internationalized and multidisciplinary field, shaped by the growing relevance of psychosocial risks, mental health, and work-related well-being.

  • occupational burnout
  • bibliometric analysis
  • scientific production
  • co-authorship networks
  • keyword co-occurrence
  • psychosocial risks
  • occupational health psychology
  • work-related stress
  • research trends
Research on occupational burnout has grown substantially since the concept first attracted scientific attention in the 1970s. Early studies focused mainly on professions marked by intense interpersonal demands, especially in human service fields such as healthcare, education, and social services [1][2]. Over time, however, burnout research expanded beyond these settings and came to include a much wider range of occupations and disciplines, including psychology, management, healthcare sciences, and organizational studies [3][4][5].
As the field developed, scientific output increased considerably. Research no longer focused only on antecedents and consequences, but also began to examine burnout in relation to constructs such as work engagement, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and employee well-being [6][7]. This broadening reflects a growing recognition of burnout as a key concept for understanding the psychological impact of demanding work environments and psychosocial risks within organizations [8]. On this basis, burnout is now widely seen as a central construct in occupational health psychology for explaining the effects of chronic work-related stress on employee well-being [3][9].
At the same time, burnout research has been shaped by multiple theoretical perspectives that differ in how the construct is defined and measured [3][4][10]. Although this diversity has enriched the field, it has also introduced conceptual and methodological heterogeneity, making it more difficult to form an integrated view of how burnout research has evolved across contexts and disciplines [9][11][12].
In fields marked by rapid growth and conceptual diversity, bibliometric analysis is especially useful. By examining large bodies of scientific literature, it makes it possible to identify patterns in research productivity, collaboration networks among authors and institutions, and the thematic structure of research topics [13][14][15][16]. It also helps trace the evolution of research themes, detect emerging trends, and map the intellectual structure of complex and interdisciplinary areas of study [17][18][19].
Against this background, the present study examines the development of scientific research on occupational burnout through a structured bibliometric analysis of publications indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection. Specifically, it analyzes: (a) the evolution of scientific output over time, (b) collaboration patterns among authors and countries/regions, (c) the thematic structure of the field through keyword co-occurrence, and (d) citation patterns across journals. In addition, the study identifies the topics that have received the greatest attention and highlights potentially underexplored areas and research gaps. By mapping the scientific landscape of burnout research, this work seeks to clarify how knowledge in the field has developed and to indicate priorities for future research in occupational health psychology during the period 2000 to 2025.
Unlike systematic reviews and meta-analyses, which synthesize empirical evidence to answer specific research questions or estimate effect sizes, bibliometric analyses provide a complementary perspective by examining the intellectual, conceptual, and collaborative structure of a scientific field through large-scale publication metadata [13][16]. In this regard, bibliometric mapping enables the identification of research trends, influential contributors, thematic evolution, and knowledge networks that cannot be captured through traditional evidence synthesis methods alone [13][16]. Accordingly, the present study seeks not only to describe the scientific production on occupational burnout but also to examine the structural development of the field and to identify emerging directions that may inform future theoretical, methodological, and applied research, while recognizing that bibliometric maps require theoretically informed and reflexive interpretation and cannot be treated as self-explanatory representations of the field.

This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper https://doi.org/10.3390/encyclopedia6080162

References

  1. Freudenberger, H.J. Staff burnout. J. Soc. Issues 1974, 30, 159–165.
  2. Maslach, C.; Jackson, S.E. The measurement of experienced burnout. J. Occup. Behav. 1981, 2, 99–113.
  3. Maslach, C.; Schaufeli, W.B.; Leiter, M.P. Job burnout. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2001, 52, 397–422.
  4. Bakker, A.B.; Demerouti, E. Job demands–resources theory: Taking stock and looking forward. J. Occup. Health Psychol. 2017, 22, 273–285.
  5. Schaufeli, W.B. Applying the Job Demands–Resources model: A “how to” guide to measuring and tackling work engagement and burnout. Organ. Dyn. 2017, 46, 120–132.
  6. Schaufeli, W.B.; Taris, T.W. A critical review of the Job Demands–Resources Model: Implications for improving work and health. In Bridging Occupational, Organizational and Public Health; Bauer, G.F., Hämmig, O., Eds.; Springer: Berlin/Heidelberg, Germany, 2014; pp. 43–68.
  7. Maslach, C.; Leiter, M.P. Understanding the burnout experience: Recent research and its implications for psychiatry. World Psychiatry 2016, 15, 103–111.
  8. Gil-Monte, P.R.; Moreno-Jiménez, B. El síndrome de quemarse por el trabajo (burnout). Rev. Psicol. Del Trab. Organ. 2005, 21, 113–134.
  9. Schaufeli, W.B.; Leiter, M.P.; Maslach, C. Burnout: 35 years of research and practice. Career Dev. Int. 2009, 14, 204–220.
  10. Gil-Monte, P.R. El Síndrome de Quemarse por el Trabajo (Burnout): Una Enfermedad Laboral en la Sociedad del Bienestar; Pirámide: Madrid, Spain, 2005.
  11. Shirom, A. Job-related burnout. In Handbook of Occupational Health Psychology; Quick, J.C., Tetrick, L.E., Eds.; American Psychological Association: Washington, DC, USA, 2003; pp. 245–264.
  12. Schaufeli, W.B.; Enzmann, D. The Burnout Companion to Study and Practice: A Critical Analysis; Taylor & Francis: Abingdon, UK, 1998.
  13. Donthu, N.; Kumar, S.; Mukherjee, D.; Pandey, N.; Lim, W.M. How to conduct a bibliometric analysis: An overview and guidelines. J. Bus. Res. 2021, 133, 285–296.
  14. Passas, I. Bibliometric analysis: The main steps. Encyclopedia 2024, 4, 1014–1025.
  15. Iliescu, A.-N. Green Knowledge Management—Bibliometric Analysis. Encyclopedia 2024, 4, 923–935.
  16. Zupic, I.; Čater, T. Bibliometric methods in management and organization. Organ. Res. Methods 2015, 18, 429–472.
  17. ElHichou-Ahmed, C.; Popovaitė, V.; Hoarau-Heemstra, H. Dancing with the algorithm: Introducing a multi-phased bibliometric approach for advancing Arctic social science research. Polar J. 2025, 15, 222–243.
  18. El Hichou Ahmed, C.; Mata García, A. Migración, cooperación internacional, desarrollo territorial: Una aproximación bibliométrica al estado del conocimiento. In Cooperación Intergubernamental y Desarrollo Territorial Sostenible: Cinco Casos de Estudio En El Espacio Iberoamericano; Tirant lo Blanch: Valencia, Spain, 2026; pp. 411–435.
  19. Zakopoulos, V.; Xanthopoulou, P. Mapping qualitative research in social sciences and humanities: A bibliometric review. Encyclopedia 2026, 6, 53.
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