Walking Through the Scientific Landscape of Occupational Burnout Research: A Bibliometric Analysis (2000–2025)

Abstract

Occupational burnout has become a major topic in occupational health psychology because of its implications for employee well-being, mental health, and organizational functioning. Although the scientific literature has grown steadily, the field still requires an integrated picture of its development, collaboration patterns, and thematic structure. This study examined the evolution, collaboration patterns and thematic structure of occupational burnout research through a bibliometric analysis of publications indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection between 2000 and 2025. A total of 3227 publications were retrieved using a topic-based search focused specifically on occupational burnout terminology. Bibliometric analyses used VOSviewer to map and visualize trends in scientific production, co-authorship networks, country/region collaboration, keyword co-occurrence, and journal citation patterns. The findings indicate an accelerating increase in publication output, from 17 publications in 2000 to 454 in 2025. The period 2020–2025 alone accounted for 2142 publications, representing 66.4% of the corpus. Collaboration analyses revealed an increasingly international field involving 122 countries/regions, with the United States occupying a highly connected position and collaboration clusters emerging in Europe and Asia. Spain also appeared to connect European and Latin American research communities. Thematic mapping showed that burnout is closely associated with organizational variables, psychological distress, healthcare settings, and measurement-related issues. Overall, occupational burnout research has become an internationalized and multidisciplinary field, shaped by the growing relevance of psychosocial risks, mental health, and work-related well-being.