25th anniversary of International Journal of Logistics Research and Applications ‘The future of logistics and supply chain research: challenges and opportunities’

25th anniversary of International Journal of Logistics Research and Applications 'The future of logistics and supply chain research: challenges and opportunities'Logistics and supply chain management are the key means for promoting economic development.Logistics involves not only the efficient flow of materials, but also the timely transmission of information and the optimal allocation of resources, which plays an important supporting role in the operation of global supply chains and ensures the smooth flow of goods from production to consumers.The emergence and development of the Internet and its role in information management, marketing and supply chain coordination has opened the door to a range of research and business opportunities (Kouvelis, Chambers, and Wang 2006), which have gradually given rise to emerging concepts such as Industry 4.0 (Olsen and Tomlin 2020) and Smart Supply Chain Innovation (Liu et al. 2022).In recent years, logistics and supply chains are not limited to the relationship between upstream and downstream nodes, but tend to collaborate and integrate multiple stakeholders, thus enabling supply chains to gradually evolve into a network or ecosystem (Yan et al. 2022).Meanwhile, supply chain efficiency and performance have achieved significant improvements under the key drivers of digitisation and intelligence (Liu et al. 2020).Furthermore, sustainable operations and carbon neutrality will become key themes in logistics and supply chain management in the future in terms of development models (Tseng et al. 2022).There are, however, some multi-faceted challenges in logistics and supply chain management like security, cost, resilience, social license and efficiency that are testing the boundaries of current knowledge.In a volatile, uncertain, and complex global environment, disruptions in upstream companies will lead to supply disruptions, and disruptions in downstream companies will lead to a chain reaction and further damage upstream business operations (Choi 2020).Therefore, in the face of these challenging situations, how to better implement logistics and supply chain operations and what important factors should be emphasised in logistics and supply chain management in the future has become a common concern for managers and scholars.As an authoritative academic journal in the field of logistics and supply chain management, the International Journal of Logistics Research and Applications (IJLRA) has combined cutting-edge academic theories and industrial practice trends to publish leading influential research over the past 25 years.IJLRA has dedicated a special issue to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the journal.This special issue comprises six research papers from leading scholars in the field of logistics and supply chain management from around the world.It systematically examines the development of future opportunities and challenges of logistics and supply chains, including an exploration of various topics such as sustainable and circular supply chains, supply chain resilience, and new technologies in logistics and supply chains.In this editorial, we introduce the title, methodology, and key findings of each paper, followed by a concluding discussion of future research in logistics and supply chains.The first paper, entitled 'Data-driven zero-carbon transition analysis in the industrial and manufacturing sectors: a world-regional perspective', by Tat-Dat Bui, Viqi Ardaniah, Qinghua Zhu,