{"doi":"10.1007/s11192-016-2177-x","title":"Which early works are cited most frequently in climate change research literature? A bibliometric approach based on Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy","abstract":"This bibliometric analysis focuses on the general history of climate change research and, more specifically, on the discovery of the greenhouse effect. First, the Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy (RPYS) is applied to a large publication set on climate change of 222,060 papers published between 1980 and 2014. The references cited therein were extracted and analyzed with regard to publications, which are cited most frequently. Second, a new method for establishing a more subject-specific publication set for applying RPYS (based on the co-citations of a marker reference) is proposed (RPYS-CO). The RPYS of the climate change literature focuses on the history of climate change research in total. We identified 35 highly-cited publications across all disciplines, which include fundamental early scientific works of the nineteenth century (with a weak connection to climate change) and some cornerstones of science with a stronger connection to climate change. By using the Arrhenius (Philos Mag J Sci Ser 5(41):237-276, 1896) paper as a RPYS-CO marker paper, we selected only publications specifically discussing the discovery of the greenhouse effect and the role of carbon dioxide. Using different RPYS approaches in this study, we were able to identify the complete range of works of the celebrated icons as well as many less known works relevant for the history of climate change research. The analyses confirmed the potential of the RPYS method for historical studies: Seminal papers are detected on the basis of the references cited by the overall community without any further assumptions.","journal":"Scientometrics","year":2016,"id":3305,"datarank":1.7481635911376028,"base_score":4.007333185232471,"endowment":4.007333185232471,"self_citation_contribution":0.6010999777848708,"citation_network_contribution":1.1470636133527319,"self_endowment_contribution":0.6010999777848708,"citer_contribution":1.1470636133527319,"corpus_percentile":63.22213181448332,"corpus_rank":453,"citation_count":55,"citer_count":38,"citers_with_citation_signal":31,"citers_with_endowment":31,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":true,"is_dataset_confidence":0.6324,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2016-11-11","fair_score":21.6667,"fair_percentile":2.3526824978012315,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":839,"name":"Robin Haunschild","orcid":"0000-0001-7025-7256","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1452,"name":"Andreas Thor","orcid":"0000-0003-2575-2893","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":661,"name":"Lutz Bornmann","orcid":"0000-0003-0810-7091","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":5442,"name":"Werner Marx","orcid":"0000-0002-1763-5753","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":23,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-03-01T18:20:47.508186Z","pmid":"28190904","pmcid":"PMC5266778","fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":"hybrid","license":"cc-by","views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":40.0,"fair_a":30.0,"fair_i":0.0,"fair_r":16.6667,"fair_zscore":-2.1297,"fair_rationale":{"fair_score":21.67,"has_llm":true,"dimensions":{"F":{"name":"Findable","score":40.0,"criteria":[{"key":"f_has_doi","label":"Has a persistent DOI","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.0,"fraction":1.0,"signal":"DOI present","rationale":null},{"key":"f_repository_presence","label":"Indexed in repositories / literature DBs","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.0,"fraction":1.0,"signal":"datacite=0, pmcid=True, pmid=True","rationale":null},{"key":"f_persistent_ids","label":"Resolvable scholarly identifiers (OpenAlex)","kind":"deterministic","weight":0.5,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"no OpenAlex id","rationale":null},{"key":"f_metadata_richness","label":"Rich, machine-readable metadata","kind":"llm","weight":1.0,"fraction":0.0,"signal":null,"rationale":"No machine-readable metadata is provided; the paper only describes the data source without structured metadata."}]},"A":{"name":"Accessible","score":30.0,"criteria":[{"key":"a_open_access","label":"Open Access / files deposited","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.5,"fraction":1.0,"signal":"Open Access","rationale":null},{"key":"a_retrievable","label":"Free full text retrievable","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.0,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"0 OA location(s)","rationale":null},{"key":"a_access_protocol","label":"Clear data/code access protocol","kind":"llm","weight":1.0,"fraction":0.0,"signal":null,"rationale":"No clear protocol for accessing the underlying data or code is stated; the data is from a proprietary in-house database with no access details."}]},"I":{"name":"Interoperable","score":0.0,"criteria":[{"key":"i_linked_data","label":"Linked datasets / DataCite relations","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.0,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"linked_datasets=0, datacite=0","rationale":null},{"key":"i_standard_ids","label":"References data via standard accessions","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.0,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"accessions=0, trials=0","rationale":null},{"key":"i_standards","label":"Standard formats, vocabularies & identifiers","kind":"llm","weight":1.0,"fraction":0.0,"signal":null,"rationale":"The data is not provided in standard formats or with standard vocabularies; only bibliographic references are given, but the dataset itself is absent."}]},"R":{"name":"Reusable","score":16.67,"criteria":[{"key":"r_license","label":"Clear, open reuse license","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.5,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"no license","rationale":null},{"key":"r_downloads","label":"Demonstrated reuse (downloads)","kind":"deterministic","weight":0.5,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"downloads=0","rationale":null},{"key":"r_version","label":"Versioned / maintained","kind":"deterministic","weight":0.5,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"no version chain","rationale":null},{"key":"r_dataset","label":"Classified as a data resource","kind":"deterministic","weight":0.5,"fraction":1.0,"signal":"is_dataset","rationale":null},{"key":"r_reusability","label":"Data-availability statement, license & reproducibility","kind":"llm","weight":2.0,"fraction":0.167,"signal":null,"rationale":"The paper is open access under CC BY 4.0, but lacks a data availability statement and does not provide the dataset or code, severely limiting reproducibility."}]}},"suggestions":["Deposit the dataset (e.g., list of cited references and counts) in a public repository like Zenodo or Figshare with a DOI.","Include a data availability statement specifying where and how to access the data and code.","Provide the code (e.g., CRExplorer scripts or analysis steps) in a version-controlled repository.","Use standard file formats (e.g., CSV, JSON) for the data and provide a data dictionary or metadata file.","Add machine-readable metadata (e.g., schema.org markup) to the paper's landing page."],"model":"deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash","agent_version":"fair_agent_v2","fulltext_source":"epmc_xml"},"fair_model":"deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash","fair_agent_version":"fair_agent_v2","fair_fulltext_source":"epmc_xml","fair_has_llm":true,"fair_computed_at":"2026-06-18T00:43:15.070754Z","clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}