# Insight from Review Articles of Life Cycle Assessment for Buildings
## 4 Conclusions and Limitations  
In this study, a three-stage mixed research method combining scientometric analysis and qualitative analysis is employed to investigate the review articles published in the LCA-B field from 2009 to 2025. Based on bibliometric research, 327 review articles are identified and selected as study samples, and the publication trend of these articles is derived. The following conclusions are obtained:* The most popular journal is observed to be _Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews,_ followed by _Sustainability, Journal of Cleaner Production_, and _International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment_. Five main collaboration groups are obtained that contain at least three influential scholars. [PERSON], [PERSON], [PERSON], [PERSON], [PERSON], [PERSON], and [PERSON] are observed to be the most active recent researchers and are also among the most influential scholars in LCA-B review studies. China, United States, and Italy have the most published LCA-B review papers, and China, Australia, and Spain are most active in this field.
* Thirty highly cited review articles were selected, based on which the main findings as well as challenges are summarized and synthesized from these influential articles: (1) Low-energy buildings demonstrate superior life cycle assessment outcomes compared to net-zero energy counterparts. (2) Comparability issues persist among LCA studies of various building cases, a set of standardized guidelines and methodology is essential for facilitating consistent benchmarking and cross-case comparison in the field. (3) Interoperability issues and data sharing limitations pose significant challenges for advancing BIM-LCA applications. (4) Developing an inclusive life cycle assessment model that incorporates socio-cultural factors is crucial for achieving complete building performance evaluations. (5) The lack of standardized protocols for measuring the environmental and economic benefits is the major barrier faced with the implementation of circular economy strategies.  
There are three main limitations in this study: (1) Only one database, i.e., Web of Science, is used for selecting related articles, which may omit some key documents and thus cause an incomplete review of the literature. (2) The exclusion of non-English studies may overlook social or regional perspectives. (3) The initial selected review articles lack further screening and refinement, and some articles with inconsistent research content may still remain in the literature sample. Therefore, broader search strategies are expected to be employed to provide more comprehensive literature reviews, and the step of screening and refinement is required for the retrieved article samples in future analysis of review articles.  
Conceptualization, Z.H.; methodology, Y.L.; software, Y.Z.; formal analysis, C.L.; writing--original draft preparation, B.C. and Y.L.; writing--review and editing, D.C.; supervision, D.W. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, grant number 51608001, and Youth Talent Program in Anhui University of Technology, grant number DT18200013.  
Not applicable.  
The authors are grateful for the support of [PERSON] and [PERSON] from College of Architecture, Texas A&M University, United States for the figures used in this research.  
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.