Citation analysis to reconstruct the dynamics of Antarctic ozone hole research and formulation of the Montreal Protocol

• Main Authors: Persson, O, Dastidar, Prabir G
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Indian Academy of Sciences 2013
• Subjects: Others; Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://moeseprints.incois.gov.in/608/; http://moeseprints.incois.gov.in/608/1/Citation%20analysis.pdf; http://www.currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/104/07/0835.pdf

The ozone layer acts like a shield in safeguarding the Earth by preventing the harmful ultraviolet radiations from entering into the atmosphere. Reported damage to the ozone layer in 1985 was a significant milestone in Antarctic science research. The research work played a significant role in generating international socio-political debate on this great environmental crisis. This article aims to reconstruct the intellectual developments in the field an d identify important scientific events which contributed to the formulation of the world’s most successful multilate ral treaty, the Mont-real Protocol. The dynamics of the research field was mapped us ing a newly developed indicator – weighted direct citations (WDC). The WDC value indicates intellectual closeness between two citations in terms of co-citations and shared references. Direct citati ons were weighted with shared references and co-citations to derive WDC values. An attempt was made to decompose the citation network of articles to identify significant activity layers.