Based on environmental, legal, social, and economic factors, reverse logistics and closed-loop supply
chain issues have attracted attention among both academia and practitioners. This attention is evident
by the vast number of publications in scientific journals which have been published in recent years.
Hence, a comprehensive literature review of recent and state-of-the-art papers is vital to draw a framework
of the past, and to shed light on future directions. The aim of this paper is to review recently published
papers in reverse logistic and closed-loop supply chain in scientific journals. A total of 382 papers
published between January 2007 and March 2013 are selected and reviewed. The papers are then analyzed
and categorized to construct a useful foundation of past research. Finally, gaps in the literature
are identified to clarify and to suggest future research opportunities.