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Climate Change Research in View of Bibliometrics
Open accessAbstract
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.
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“and the wider climate literature is growing exponentially 4,5 .”
From Machine-learning-based evidence and attribution mapping of 100,000 climate impact studies (2021) · cites this paper as [4]
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“This exponential growth in peer-reviewed scientific publications on climate change 4,5 is already pushing manual expert assessments to their limits.”
From Machine-learning-based evidence and attribution mapping of 100,000 climate impact studies (2021) · cites this paper as [4]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Haunschild, R., Bornmann, L., & Marx, W.
- Affiliations
- Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research (DE)
- Max Planck Society (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Haunschild, Robin
- Venue
- PLOS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2016-07-29
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- e0160393
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4966958
- OpenAlex
- W2267732457
- Cited by
- 341
- References
- 39
- Citations by year
- 2026: 29 · 2025: 41 · 2024: 39 · 2023: 37 · 2022: 38 · 2021: 58 · 2020: 32 · 2019: 23 · 2018: 22 · 2017: 15 · 2016: 7
- FWCI
- 20.86
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Library and Information Sciences › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Climate Change Communication and Perception
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Psychology Research and Bibliometrics
- Keywords
- climate change research, citation impact, climate modeling, climate change adaptation, climate change mitigation, climate change vulnerability, climate risk, research topic evolution, journal impact
- MeSH terms
- Research, Bibliometrics, Climate Change
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