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

there are areas with climate change papers (such as computer science, pink in map 2) that are not well cited by climate change policy documents–there is far less pink in map 3 than in map 2. Similar to all papers from the Scopus database shown in map (1) of Fig 10, papers with at least one policy citation extend across all scientific fields [see map (4) of Fig 10]. However, some major fields appear less pronounced in map 4: in particular chemistry, physics, computer sciences, and engineering. Biology, disease sciences, and health sciences are accentuated, indi- cating that in general these fields are more policy relevant. The fields of climate change papers in map 2 of Fig 10 are concentrated in biology, earth sciences, engineering, disease sciences, and physics (less pronounced). Climate change papers with at least one policy citation [see map 3 of Fig 10] show a field-specific pattern similar to the overall climate change policy papers in map 2. It seems that politics does not have a specific field, but reflects the field-spe- cific orientation of climate change research. For COVID-19 research, Yin, Gao [11] investigated the temporal shift of the literature cited in policy documents concerning the field-specific distribution (compared to the whole policy literature). Their results reveal “a clear shift from drawing primarily on the biomedical litera- ture to citing economics, society, and other fields of study, which is consistent with overall shifts in policy focus” [11]. In this study, we also investigated whether there is a field-specific

shift using the 27 high-level ASJC journal categories. Fig 11 shows the field-specific orientation of papers (with policy citations) over the entire period (1996–2019). For better readability of the figure, we used the top 10 ASJCs of both sets of papers (Scopus papers with policy citations and Scopus papers that were cited by climate change policy documents) and obtained twelve ASJCs as common top 10 ASJCs (the interactive version of the figure shows the same analysis with all 27 ASJCs). Fig 11 demonstrates that there are some subtle shifts but the early years Fig 10. Overlay maps visualizing field-specific clusters of papers (based on citation relations). The maps include (1) all papers, (2) climate change papers, (3) climate change papers with at least one policy citation, (4) all papers in Scopus with at least one policy citation. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274693.g010 PLOS ONE How relevant is climate change research for climate change policy? PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274693 September 22, 2022 15 / 24