Retrieval strategy and possible explanations for the abnormal growth of research publications: re-evaluating a bibliometric analysis of climate change

Climate change and global warming have attracted more and more attention from countries all over the world. A recent study published in Scientometrics has evaluated the changing dynamics of climate change-related research publications via a bibliometric analysis and further probed the relationship between climate change-related research output and carbon dioxide emissions. We try to re-evaluate the bibliometric analysis section of the mentioned study and provide three improvement suggestions related to data source, search field and search query respectively. Besides, some new explanations have also been offered for the abnormal increase of research outputs indexed by Web of Science Core Collection in specific years such as 1991. These suggestions and explanations will provide important references for future various bibliometric analyses and research evaluation.