Identifying and benchmarking polar research - bibliometric issues and implications

This paper explores the challenge of identifying Antarctic polar research using conventional keyword searches, and examines the way these approaches can be used for benchmarking the bibliometric impact of polar research. It reviews existing work to identify bibliometric methodologies for Antarctic research outputs, and examines their effectiveness in extracting Antarctic-specific literature from the field of polar research as a whole. It reviews keywords used, including geographical search terms, and identifies issues that may affect metrics for countries with a strong bi-polar focus, well as measures taken to refine and constrain the search parameters in specific databases. Secondly, this paper seeks to benchmark the current impact of Antarctic polar research against global patterns in scientific research. It seeks to establish whether some observed changes in citation patterns are specific to the field or part of a global trend, looking at the citation impact historically compared to recent years.