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

Fig 3 analyzes sectors publishing policy documents in more detail by considering single institutions. The figure shows the relationship for single institutions between number of policy documents and number of climate change policy documents. On the one hand, the results reveal those institutions (with high output) that are focused on climate change and those insti- tutions that deal with climate change besides other topics. For example, due to its focus on a sector that is highly vulnerable to climate change, documents by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations cover frequently the topic of climate change (please see the interactive version of Fig 3). This is different in the field of health. Policy documents by the World Health Organization often do not cover climate change, even though this is starting to change now. This corre- sponds to the comparatively small share of publications in the field of medicine related to cli- mate change research [38]–even though there is a sizable and fast-growing number of research papers on climate and health in absolute terms [39]. On the other hand, the colors of the insti- tutional dots in Fig 3 point out the relatively high number of think tanks and IGOs with a focus on climate change–of which some like the Global Warming Policy Foundation are alleged to focus on global warming misinformation and ‘climate sceptic’ contents (https:// www.desmog.com/climate-disinformation-database/). Papers cited in policy documents In this section, we additionally consider the literature cited by climate change policy docu-

ments. We would like to know, for example, (1) whether these documents focus on recently published or older science literature and (2) the research institutions that seem to be very Fig 1. Annual number of policy documents and climate change policy documents. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274693.g001 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 7 / 24