The number of scientific publications is growing exponentially, so increasing the requirement for understanding the cognitive content of assorted analysis streams and their rising branches. From a scientific discipline perspective, the literature on the mining sector – the commercial sector that extracts ores and minerals from the bottom – has additionally witnessed steady growth. However, this literature is rather fragmented in regards to the thematic topics and the geographical focus. To respond to this, this paper offers a systematic literature review of social science research on the mining sector. The publication info of this review includes a collection of 483 systemically elect papers from 976 authors, covering research conducted in seventy-three countries from five continents: continent, Europe, Asia, Australia, and America. Our contribution is twofold. Firstly, we provide an analysis of the geography of the research in terms of both authorship and empirical focus. In terms of the geographical coverage of the empirical cases, Australia appears as the most studied country in the field, followed by countries in other regions such as Asia (China, India, Russia, and Turkey), Africa (Ghana, South Africa, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo), North America (the USA and Canada), Latin America (Brazil and Chile) and Europe (Poland, Spain, and Sweden). However, this dispersion is not reflected in the geographical coverage of the affiliations of the authors. Secondly, we identify the most popular social science research topics in the mining sector. Our results show that the social science research on the mining sector shifted from the traditional research streams (e.g., industrialization and growth, colonization, technological and economic development, and the resource curse) to the new streams of research on social, environmental, and economic sustainability (e.g., the social license to operate, corporate social responsibility, criticality of the rare earth elements, material flow analysis and environmental impacts). Overall, our study serves as an entry point for researchers who are interested in social science research in the mining sector.
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