The construction of interdisciplinarity: The development of the knowledge base and programmatic focus of the journal Climatic Change, 1977–2013

Abstract

Climate change as a complex physical and social issue has gained increasing attention in the natural as well as the social sciences. Climate change research has become more interdisciplinary and even transdisciplinary as a typical Mode‐2 science that is also dependent on an application context for its further development. We propose to approach interdisciplinarity as a co‐construction of the knowledge base in the reference patterns and the programmatic focus in the editorials in the core journal of the climate‐change sciences—Climatic Change—during the period 1977–2013. First, we analyze the knowledge base of the journal and map journal–journal relations on the basis of the references in the articles. Second, we follow the development of the programmatic focus by analyzing the semantics in the editorials. We argue that interdisciplinarity is a result of the co‐construction between different agendas: The selection of publications into the knowledge base of the journal, and the adjustment of the programmatic focus to the political context in the editorials. Our results show a widening of the knowledge base from referencing the multidisciplinary journals Nature and Science to citing journals from specialist fields. The programmatic focus follows policy‐oriented issues and incorporates public metaphors.

The Triple Helix Interactions among Universities, Industries and Governments: Case of Climate Change Field

“…In this research, the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) are used to search for scientific publications in the WoS database. The keywords including "climate chang*", "climate variabilit*", "global warming", and "climate warming" present in the title or abstract are retrieved (Haunschild, Bornmann, & Marx, 2016;Li, Wang, & Ho, 2011;Wang et al, 2014). The time span of data is confined to 2001-2021, and the document types is limited to article and review.…”

“…Climate change is a typical interdisciplinary research field with characteristics of complexity, variety, and comprehensiveness, requiring the integration of knowledge from social sciences, natural sciences, engineering, and technology (Bhaskar et al, 2010; Hellsten & Leydesdorff, 2016; McCright et al, 2013). It is also a global issue that affects the survival and development of humanity.…”

Effect of Scientific Collaboration on Interdisciplinarity in Climate Change From a Scientometric Perspective

“…Of course, some researchers and journals in the LIS have started to pay attention to climate change in recent years. Hellsten and Leydesdorff (2016) explored the construction of interdisciplinarity, including the knowledge base and programmatic focus, in the core journal of the climate change sciences— Climate Change . Their results showed that the widening of the knowledge base was important in this field, and the programmatic focus followed policy-oriented issues and incorporated public metaphors.…”