Climate Change Research in View of Bibliometrics

Abstract

This bibliometric study of a large publication set dealing with research on climate change aims at mapping the relevant literature from a bibliometric perspective and presents a multitude of quantitative data: (1) The growth of the overall publication output as well as (2) of some major subfields, (3) the contributing journals and countries as well as their citation impact, and (4) a title word analysis aiming to illustrate the time evolution and relative importance of specific research topics. The study is based on 222,060 papers (articles and reviews only) published between 1980 and 2014. The total number of papers shows a strong increase with a doubling every 5–6 years. Continental biomass related research is the major subfield, closely followed by climate modeling. Research dealing with adaptation, mitigation, risks, and vulnerability of global warming is comparatively small, but their share of papers increased exponentially since 2005. Research on vulnerability and on adaptation published the largest proportion of very important papers (in terms of citation impact). Climate change research has become an issue also for disciplines beyond the natural sciences. The categories Engineering and Social Sciences show the strongest field-specific relative increase. The Journal of Geophysical Research, the Journal of Climate, the Geophysical Research Letters, and Climatic Change appear at the top positions in terms of the total number of papers published. Research on climate change is quantitatively dominated by the USA, followed by the UK, Germany, and Canada. The citation-based indicators exhibit consistently that the UK has produced the largest proportion of high impact papers compared to the other countries (having published more than 10,000 papers). Also, Switzerland, Denmark and also The Netherlands (with a publication output between around 3,000 and 6,000 papers) perform top—the impact of their contributions is on a high level. The title word analysis shows that the term climate change comes forward with time. Furthermore, the term impact arises and points to research dealing with the various effects of climate change. The discussion of the question of human induced climate change towards a clear fact (for the majority of the scientific community) stimulated research on future pathways for adaptation and mitigation. Finally, the term model and related terms prominently appear independent of time, indicating the high relevance of climate modeling.

The Role of Climate in the Collapse of the Maya Civilization: A Bibliometric Analysis of the Scientific Discourse

“…At the date of search (January 17, 2017), we retrieved 433 publications dealing with the collapse of the Maya civilization published between 1923 and 2016 (#3 of the search query), with 207 papers discussing the impact of climate on the decline of the Maya (#4 of the search query). Since the initial publication set is comparatively small (433 papers) and as we focus here on the role of climate in general and not specifically on anthropogenic climate change, only few climate relevant search terms are needed, in contrast to the search query applied in [19].…”

“…Hence, the growth rate of Maya related publications is comparatively high. However, the Maya literature increases less quickly than the literature on climate change, which doubles every five to six years [19]. dominated by journal articles.…”

O Olhar Da Ciência Para a Mitigação Das Secas

“…Segundo Haunschild et al, (2016) (SIMPSON et al, 1972). Apesar de ter provocado efeitos positivos entre os americanos, a iniciativa não logrou êxito quando experimentada no Nordeste Brasileiro (COELHO, 1985).…”

“…Os estudos mais relacionados foram encontrados na temática "mudanças climáticas" e não abordam a problemática da seca de forma específica. É o caso das publicações de Ji et al (2014), Wang et al (2014), Marx et al(2016) e Haunschild et al(2016).…”

Climate change research trends in Tanzania: A bibliometric analysis

“…Continental biomass related research was the major subfield, closely followed by climate modeling. The Journal of Geophysical Research, the Journal of Climate, the Geophysical Research Letters, and Climatic Change appear at the top positions in terms of the total number of papers published (Haunschild et al, 2016). Alex and Preedip (2010) mapped the climate change research output of India in five-year period from 2005 to 2009 based on papers abstracted in the Web of Science database.…”