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

scientific papers that cite other scientific papers, the results indicate a “classics” effect: If we look at cited references in papers, the average reference age is 13.1 years for all items in Scopus from 1996 to 2019. However, on average, climate change papers (published between 2010 and 2019) cite other scientific papers that are on average 9.7 years old. In this study, we also Fig 3. Number of policy documents and percentage of climate change policy documents on the institutional basis (Spearman rank correlation = 0.55; an interactive version can be viewed at: https://s.gwdg.de/2dC41E). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274693.g003 Fig 4. Document type of papers cited by policy documents (all policy documents and climate change policy documents). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274693.g004 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 9 / 24