Co-production is a strategy that governments can use to achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness in the delivery of public services with the contribution of society. This systematic review intends to analyze the empirical literature on the co-production of public services, rated internationally, based on the JCR and SJR indexes. One of the specific objectives in this work was to identify the bibliometric characteristics of these empirical studies; the description of their methodological aspects; the verification of how citizen participation and government initiatives aimed at promoting co-production have been discussed in these works; and the proposal of a research agenda. The results show that Latin America is the locus of 19% of the research developed on the subject. On the other hand, a small incidence of Latin American journals of high impact was identified on the JCR and SJR indexes, a fact that can possibly be explained by the predominant publication in the Spanish and Portuguese languages, even though English seems to be the most accessible language for international researchers. The case study and the experimental method were the main methods used, and some categories related to initiatives were identified: five from the government and three with citizen participation. As a contribution, this article offers research proposals based on highly qualified articles that can guide new empirical studies, still scarce in Latin American literature.
