Climate Change Research in Malaysia: A Scientometric Analysis

Climate change, a global challenge and among one of the significant keyword(s) that potentially attract various fields of studies to be performed. Assessing its changes in various types of analysis such as in terms of bibliometrics illustrate the importance of considering its global impacts. Recently, scientometric study has become interactive methods for determining the performance of certain fields of study in which it will show the interactive figures and visualizations of various types of dimensions (i.e., query of information). Scientometric study has also provided tools for summarized literature-based evidence from available or selected scientific databases. The WOS database has been started to collect scientific publications from 1970, and the results of climate change related research in Malaysia have been conducted from 1976, and it shows the increasing trends starting from the year of 1976 until 2021. Thus, the objective of this study is to determine the current status of climate change research in Malaysia through the scientometric analysis. The evolution of scientific research publication in climate change had shown the increasing trends, in which the total overall publication was recorded as low as 2 papers in 1992 up until tenfold in 2020, with a total of 200 papers. The highest total scientific publication in the knowledge domain is 13.01% which is in 2020. The study showed that a total of 1,049 authors with 1,522 organizations have been involved actively in climate change research in Malaysia. The study also showed that a total of 35,550 citations were received from these areas and a total of 38 co-citation clusters of research emerged in the cluster analysis. In conclusion, climate change research in Malaysia is one of the potential top knowledge domains (i.e., field of study) in the future scientific research areas.