What about social science and interdisciplinarity? A 10-year content analysis of energy policy

This chapter provides a content analysis of 1,453 articles published in Energy Policy from 1999 to 2008 involving 3,345 authors and 42,768 references. We selected Energy Policy because we believe the journal to be representative of the range of topics on energy policy research available in the field. The typical researcher who publishes in this journal is trained in science or economics, is affiliated with a university or research institute and was working within traditional disciplinary boundaries when their article was published. The most discussed technologies were all fossil-fuel-based and the most popular topic areas were energy markets, followed by climate change and projections of supply and demand. Of the articles that referenced other peer-reviewed articles or books, scientific journals were cited the most, followed by economics journals and Energy Policy articles. Social science and arts and humanities journals constituted less than five percent of all peer-reviewed citations. Based on this analysis, the authors of this section recommend that researchers consider using more alternative methods and topics in their contributions to the field.