Catalysts for progress? Mapping policy insights from energy research

Abstract

This article measures policy relevance in the abstracts of papers published between 2010 and 2023 in the top 100 journals covering energy research. Communicating the impact of research beyond academia is key to overcoming the evidence-policy divide. Yet, policy engagement is shaped by structural factors and poses unresolved dilemmas for researchers. Qualitative analyses of how research findings are presented in publications are inherently limited in scope, while simple search queries miss contributions that do not refer to ‘policy’ explicitly. Undertaking a large-scale bibliometric analysis, we use computational methods to evaluate over 270,000 abstracts by applying a carefully validated keyword-based dictionary approach. Overall, we find that 15 % of abstracts contain policy-relevant statements, with considerable differences among journals mentioning policy in their aims and scope. We also observe geographic variation by authorship and the funding agencies that sponsored research projects. Finally, we apply unsupervised topic models to identify distinct themes in policy-relevant abstracts. Our analysis reveals that the topics of renewable energy and implementation are most prevalent but have declined since 2010, while the focus on energy systems and emissions has gradually increased. These findings inform ongoing discussions about bridging the gap between research and policy impact in a field that will play a pivotal role in developing pathways to net zero.