Rights statement: © 2014 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
Final published version, 4.24 MB, PDF document
Available under license: CC BY
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Mapping the landscape of climate engineering
AU - Oldham, Paul
AU - Szerszynski, Bronislaw
AU - Stilgoe, Jack
AU - Brown, Calum
AU - Eacott, Bella
AU - Yuille, Andy
N1 - © 2014 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2015/2
Y1 - 2015/2
N2 - In the absence of a governance framework for climate engineering technologies such as Solar Radiation Management (SRM), the practices of scientific research and intellectual property acquisition can de facto shape the development of the field. It is therefore important to make visible emerging patterns of research and patenting, which we suggest can effectively be done using bibliometric methods. We explore the challenges in defining the boundary of climate engineering, and set out the research strategy taken in this study. A dataset of 825 scientific publications on climate engineering between 1971 and 2013 was identified, including 193 on solar radiation management; these are analyzed in terms of trends, institutions, authors and funders. For our patent dataset, we identified 143 first filings directly or indirectly related to climate engineering technologies – of which 28 were related to SRM technologies – linked to 910 family members. We analyze the main patterns discerned in patent trends, applicants, and inventors. We compare our own findings with those of an earlier bibliometric study of climate engineering, and show how our method is consistent with the need for transparency and repeatability, and the need to adjust the method as the field develops. We conclude that bibliometric monitoring techniques can play an important role in the anticipatory governance of climate engineering.
AB - In the absence of a governance framework for climate engineering technologies such as Solar Radiation Management (SRM), the practices of scientific research and intellectual property acquisition can de facto shape the development of the field. It is therefore important to make visible emerging patterns of research and patenting, which we suggest can effectively be done using bibliometric methods. We explore the challenges in defining the boundary of climate engineering, and set out the research strategy taken in this study. A dataset of 825 scientific publications on climate engineering between 1971 and 2013 was identified, including 193 on solar radiation management; these are analyzed in terms of trends, institutions, authors and funders. For our patent dataset, we identified 143 first filings directly or indirectly related to climate engineering technologies – of which 28 were related to SRM technologies – linked to 910 family members. We analyze the main patterns discerned in patent trends, applicants, and inventors. We compare our own findings with those of an earlier bibliometric study of climate engineering, and show how our method is consistent with the need for transparency and repeatability, and the need to adjust the method as the field develops. We conclude that bibliometric monitoring techniques can play an important role in the anticipatory governance of climate engineering.
KW - geoengineering
KW - climate engineering
KW - bibliometrics
KW - patents
KW - intellectual property
KW - anticipatory governance
U2 - 10.1098/rsta.2014.0065
DO - 10.1098/rsta.2014.0065
M3 - Journal article
VL - 372
SP - 1
EP - 20
JO - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London A
JF - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London A
SN - 0264-3820
IS - 2031
M1 - 20140065
ER -