Hello,

Carbon Brief has just launched Project Cosmos, a groundbreaking digital database that maps the "universe" of climate science.

The Cosmos database contains more than 1.8 million unique publications linked by 40 million citation relationships. It represents the most complete and expansive mapping of human knowledge on climate change ever assembled, tracking more than a century of academic research.

It is the culmination of an intensive 18-month research and development project. Carbon Brief constructed the platform with the expert guidance of a specialist team of academics from the University of Exeter’s Centre for Climate Communication & Data Science and the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation in Paris.

Visualised as an interactive “cosmos” (above) – a vast network graph in which each publication appears as a “star” – the database reveals how different fields of climate research relate to, and build upon, one another.

To mark the launch, Carbon Brief’s journalists have carried out an initial bibliometric analysis of the database to produce the “Cosmos 500” – rankings of the 500 most-cited publications, authors and institutions in climate science.

The rankings provide a unique new lens on the people, organisations and research that have had the greatest influence on the development of climate knowledge.

The Cosmos database now represents a significant new resource for the global climate community.

Carbon Brief is inviting academics, journalists, analysts and other researchers to submit proposals – via cosmos@carbonbrief.org – for future co-authored research projects, literature reviews and analytical studies using the Cosmos database.

And, tomorrow, look out for our in-depth interviews with two of the world’s most highly cited scientists. They will go live on our website at 2pm UK time.

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