Accompanying the increased use and storage of digital documentation, like either a repository of research articles or legal and medical documents, finding the proper article is a dullsville task. With the increased number of articles, searching for pertinent documentation from constantly growing repositories becomes a sluggish and incommodious chore. In recent years, various evaluation datasets, solutions and methodologies have been proposed claiming considerable progress with state-of-art in area of recommender systems. In this study, we present the scope of document recommendation whether in academic paper or patent citation, assisting decisions in legal/ medical decisions, news or relevant content finding for digital services. Then we depict the present methodologies and approaches along with datasets. Analysing various aspects, we show the differences. Furthermore, we unveil the challenges and directions to work on them. This survey can help enthusiasts and researchers of this field in comprehending recent trends, by providing with cutting edge knowledge