Scientific data-driven evaluation on academic articles of low-carbon economy

• Published in: Energy policy Vol. 125; pp. 358 - 367
• Main Authors: Lyu, Peng-hui, Ngai, Eric W.T., Wu, Pei-yi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidlington Elsevier Ltd 01.02.2019; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Academic impact; California; Carbon; Citation analysis; Citation indexes; Citation influence; Citations; Clean energy; cooperative research; Economic research; Economics; Electronic publishing; Energy; Energy economics; Energy policy; Green economy; Green energy; Institutes; Intellectuals; International collaboration; International cooperation; Internet; Life cycle engineering; Life cycles; Low-carbon economy research; Networks; Production; Quantitative assessment; renewable energy sources; Scientific data driven evaluation; Social sciences; Speech; Sustainable energy; United States > US; California; Scientific data driven evaluation; Citation influence; Quantitative assessment; Low-carbon economy research; Academic impact
• ISSN: 0301-4215; 1873-6777
• DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2018.11.004

Low-carbon economy has played an important role in green energy economics in last two decades. The number of studies conducted on low-carbon economy has increased steadily since 1990 and now in a fast-growing stage of its academic articles’ production life cycle. An increasing number of scholars have paid their attentions to low-carbon economy research. Hence, the low-carbon economy has been an important and popular topic in the past 30 years as evidenced by numerous papers in journals listed in several subject categories in the Web of Science (WoS) online database. This research reviewed more than 14,000 bibliographic records from the Science Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index of WoS. In this work, paper citations, subject categories, cited journals, top countries, productive institutes, authors, cited references and publications’ citations or research collaborations are analysed from published literature. We have found that the top three productive journals in low-carbon economy research are Energy Policy, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews and Journal of Cleaner Production. The U.S. has an apparent advantage in the quantity and quality of low-carbon economy research. In addition, the U.S. is in the centre of international collaboration networks, including two top productive institutes, which summarized as University of California Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon University accordingly. An overall trend of the developing analysis of low-carbon economy research can provide a clear knowledge map and deep understanding of academic research on low-carbon economy. •Low-carbon economy research increased rapidly in quantity and quality over 3 decades.•More than 14,000 bibliographic records from SCI and SSCI databases were reviewed.•Scientometric methods including co-author, citation/co-citation analysis were conducted.•The findings on low-carbon economy research are important to influence the policy-making.