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Commissioned by the Waddenacademie, Dialogic has mapped the knowledge infrastructure of the Wadden region and the role played by the Waddenacademie in this context. This study involved interviews with scientific researchers about the role of the Waddenacademie and a bibliometric analysis of publications from 2008 to 2018.
For the bibliometric analysis, scientific databases Web of Science, Science Direct, and Scopus, as well as meta-search engines Microsoft Academic and Google Scholar, were searched for literature related to the Wadden area. Since this research covers various disciplines with different publication practices (journal articles, books, grey literature) and subjects, a portion of the results was manually reviewed for relevance to the Wadden region and its themes. Subsequently, the remaining results were classified using a machine learning algorithm.
The analysis distinguished between research directly related to the Dutch, German, and Danish Wadden regions, research relevant to the Wadden but conducted in other locations, and research thematically related to the Wadden but without a specific location (e.g. lab research or computer simulations). In terms of relevance, most of the publications found were directly related to the Wadden. Furthermore, there was a slight increase in the number of publications between 2008 and 2018.
Regarding themes, publications were classified according to the four themes of the Trilateral Knowledge Agenda, namely:
- Theme 1: Climate, water sediments and subsurface
- Theme 2: Ecology, biodiversity and spatial processes
- Theme 3: Cultural heritage, identity and historical embedding
- Theme 4: Economy, society and sustainable development
We found that the knowledge infrastructure related to the first two themes is well organised and can be easily located and analysed using scientific databases. However, the knowledge infrastructure of themes 3 and 4 is less covered by scientific databases, mostly in Dutch, German or Danish (in contrast to the English language of the first two themes), and in formats other than scientific journals. As a result, this research is more fragmented, which further complicates automatic result classification.
Based on the bibliometric study and interviews with scientific researchers, we have formulated several conclusions and recommendations regarding the role and position of the Waddenacademie. It was concluded that the Waddenacademie adds significant value in bringing together and strengthening scientific research related to the Wadden area. Looking ahead, there are still some areas of attention for the coming years, such as the relationship between science and policy issues, or the establishment of a Wadden library with metadata on Wadden publications.
Download the full report here.
For more information, please contact Pieter Jan de Boer or Max Kemman.