Slow reception and under-citedness in climate change research: A case study of Charles David Keeling, discoverer of the risk of global warming

The Keeling curve has become a chemical landmark, whereas the papers by Charles David Keeling about the underlying carbon dioxide measurements are not cited as often as can be expected against the backdrop of his final approval. In this bibliometric study, we analyze Keeling’s papers as a case study for under-citedness of climate change publications. Three possible reasons for the under-citedness of Keeling’s papers are discussed: (1) The discourse on global cooling at the starting time of Keeling’s measurement program, (2) the underestimation of what is often seen as “routine science”, and (3) the amount of implicit/informal citations at the expense of explicit/formal (reference-based) citations. Those reasons may have contributed more or less to the slow reception and the under-citedness of Keeling’s seminal works.