Alternative Dispute Resolution Research Landscape from 1981 to 2022

Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) is an important means of resolving disputes outside of traditional legal frameworks. It is usually adopted because of its flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and ability to preserve relationships that a contentious court battle might damage. This study aims to evaluate the scientific publication related to ADR. To do so, we used metadata of ADR-related articles from 1981 to 2022 collected in the Web of Science Core Collection and carried out a bibliometric, network, and latent Dirichlet allocation analysis. Our results indicate that ADR research is concentrated in North America, with research organizations from the United States accounting for most publications. At the same time, recent years have seen a shift to a more diverse group of countries, with the Chinese City University of Hong Kong and the Australian Victoria University leading in the last five years. The five main topics in ADR research include online dispute resolution for consumer protection, mediation for family law, arbitration in medical malpractice cases, ADR in construction projects, and ADR in employment law. The most frequent research areas assigned to ADR publications are Government & Law and Business & Economics. Network results show keywords ADR, Mediation, and Arbitration as central nodes, while the Chinese and North American organizations established the most frequent collaborations, addressing ADR applications in various sectors. The findings underscore the interdisciplinary nature of ADR research, its adaptability across industries, and the importance of cross-cultural research partnerships.