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How relevant is climate change research for climate change policy? An empirical analysis based on Overton data

Climate change is an ongoing topic in nearly all areas of society since many years. A discussion of climate change without referring to scientific results is not imaginable. This is especially the case for policies since action on the macro scale is required to avoid costly consequences for society....

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Autores principales: Bornmann, Lutz, Haunschild, Robin, Boyack, Kevin, Marx, Werner, Minx, Jan C.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9499296/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36137101
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274693
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author Bornmann, Lutz
Haunschild, Robin
Boyack, Kevin
Marx, Werner
Minx, Jan C.
author_facet Bornmann, Lutz
Haunschild, Robin
Boyack, Kevin
Marx, Werner
Minx, Jan C.
author_sort Bornmann, Lutz
collection PubMed
description Climate change is an ongoing topic in nearly all areas of society since many years. A discussion of climate change without referring to scientific results is not imaginable. This is especially the case for policies since action on the macro scale is required to avoid costly consequences for society. In this study, we deal with the question of how research on climate change and policy are connected. In 2019, the new Overton database of policy documents was released including links to research papers that are cited by policy documents. The use of results and recommendations from research on climate change might be reflected in citations of scientific papers in policy documents. Although we suspect a lot of uncertainty related to the coverage of policy documents in Overton, there seems to be an impact of international climate policy cycles on policy document publication. We observe local peaks in climate policy documents around major decisions in international climate diplomacy. Our results point out that IGOs and think tanks–with a focus on climate change–have published more climate change policy documents than expected. We found that climate change papers that are cited in climate change policy documents received significantly more citations on average than climate change papers that are not cited in these documents. Both areas of society (science and policy) focus on similar climate change research fields: biology, earth sciences, engineering, and disease sciences. Based on these and other empirical results in this study, we propose a simple model of policy impact considering a chain of different document types: The chain starts with scientific assessment reports (systematic reviews) that lead via science communication documents (policy briefs, policy reports or plain language summaries) and government reports to legislative documents.
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spelling pubmed-94992962022-09-23 How relevant is climate change research for climate change policy? An empirical analysis based on Overton data Bornmann, Lutz Haunschild, Robin Boyack, Kevin Marx, Werner Minx, Jan C. PLoS One Research Article Climate change is an ongoing topic in nearly all areas of society since many years. A discussion of climate change without referring to scientific results is not imaginable. This is especially the case for policies since action on the macro scale is required to avoid costly consequences for society. In this study, we deal with the question of how research on climate change and policy are connected. In 2019, the new Overton database of policy documents was released including links to research papers that are cited by policy documents. The use of results and recommendations from research on climate change might be reflected in citations of scientific papers in policy documents. Although we suspect a lot of uncertainty related to the coverage of policy documents in Overton, there seems to be an impact of international climate policy cycles on policy document publication. We observe local peaks in climate policy documents around major decisions in international climate diplomacy. Our results point out that IGOs and think tanks–with a focus on climate change–have published more climate change policy documents than expected. We found that climate change papers that are cited in climate change policy documents received significantly more citations on average than climate change papers that are not cited in these documents. Both areas of society (science and policy) focus on similar climate change research fields: biology, earth sciences, engineering, and disease sciences. Based on these and other empirical results in this study, we propose a simple model of policy impact considering a chain of different document types: The chain starts with scientific assessment reports (systematic reviews) that lead via science communication documents (policy briefs, policy reports or plain language summaries) and government reports to legislative documents. Public Library of Science 2022-09-22 /pmc/articles/PMC9499296/ /pubmed/36137101 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274693 Text en © 2022 Bornmann et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Bornmann, Lutz
Haunschild, Robin
Boyack, Kevin
Marx, Werner
Minx, Jan C.
How relevant is climate change research for climate change policy? An empirical analysis based on Overton data
title How relevant is climate change research for climate change policy? An empirical analysis based on Overton data
title_full How relevant is climate change research for climate change policy? An empirical analysis based on Overton data
title_fullStr How relevant is climate change research for climate change policy? An empirical analysis based on Overton data
title_full_unstemmed How relevant is climate change research for climate change policy? An empirical analysis based on Overton data
title_short How relevant is climate change research for climate change policy? An empirical analysis based on Overton data
title_sort how relevant is climate change research for climate change policy? an empirical analysis based on overton data
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9499296/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36137101
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274693
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