Carbon Brief, a London-based nonprofit news organization specializing in climate science, energy, and climate policy coverage, recently launched Project Cosmos, which it describes is the world’s largest database of climate change research.
Project Cosmos was developed with input from academic advisors and contains more than 1.8 million publications linked by 40 million citation relationships. The database is built upon more than 107,000 unique studies, books, and reports cited in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments since 1990 and expanded using citation and metadata from OpenAlex and other sources.
As an initial demonstration of the database’s capabilities, Carbon Brief has published “Cosmos 500” rankings of the most highly cited climate publications, researchers, and institutions, along with an interactive visualization and detailed methodology.
Carbon Brief says it plans to update and expand the database annually and undertake additional analyses. The organization is also inviting researchers, journalists, and analysts interested in investigating specific topics or trends using Project Cosmos to submit proposals for collaborative projects to cosmos@carbonbrief.org.
