A comparative bibliometric review of industrialised building system and modular construction research from 2016 to 2025

This study presents a comparative bibliometric analysis of Industrialised Building System (IBS) and modular construction research from 2016 to 2025 using 478 English journal articles and review papers retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection. A PRISMA-guided workflow was adopted for publication identification, screening and selection, while Microsoft Excel and VOSviewer were used to analyse publication trends, citation performance, country-level collaboration, keyword co-occurrence and thematic evolution. The findings show a clear expansion of IBS and modular construction research after 2020, indicating growing scholarly attention to productivity, digital transformation, sustainability and implementation challenges. Country-level analysis reveals a concentrated global knowledge structure, with China and Australia dominating research output, citation impact and collaboration strength. However, the results also show that publication volume alone does not fully represent research influence, as several lower-output countries demonstrate relatively strong collaboration linkages. Keyword analysis identifies three major thematic clusters: digital management and supply-chain integration, adoption barriers and implementation readiness, and performance, design and sustainability evaluation. The comparative findings suggest that studies from developed-country contexts more often emphasise digital integration, optimisation, productisation and scalable implementation, whereas developing countries remain more concerned with adoption readiness, cost, skills, policy support and local supply-chain capacity. China represents a transitional case, combining strong research and technological capacity with continuing implementation challenges. The study contributes by integrating related industrialised construction concepts within one bibliometric framework and by highlighting the need to align technology, supply-chain maturity, institutional support and performance evidence for context-sensitive IBS and modular construction implementation.