future directions for research meaning

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FUTURE RESEARCH

Types of future research suggestion.

The Future Research section of your dissertation is often combined with the Research Limitations section of your final, Conclusions chapter. This is because your future research suggestions generally arise out of the research limitations you have identified in your own dissertation. In this article, we discuss six types of future research suggestion. These include: (1) building on a particular finding in your research; (2) addressing a flaw in your research; examining (or testing) a theory (framework or model) either (3) for the first time or (4) in a new context, location and/or culture; (5) re-evaluating and (6) expanding a theory (framework or model). The goal of the article is to help you think about the potential types of future research suggestion that you may want to include in your dissertation.

Before we discuss each of these types of future research suggestion, we should explain why we use the word examining and then put or testing in brackets. This is simply because the word examining may be considered more appropriate when students use a qualitative research design; whereas the word testing fits better with dissertations drawing on a quantitative research design. We also put the words framework or model in brackets after the word theory . We do this because a theory , framework and model are not the same things. In the sections that follow, we discuss six types of future research suggestion.

Addressing research limitations in your dissertation

Building on a particular finding or aspect of your research, examining a conceptual framework (or testing a theoretical model) for the first time, examining a conceptual framework (or testing a theoretical model) in a new context, location and/or culture.

• Expanding a conceptual framework (or testing a theoretical model)

Re-evaluating a conceptual framework (or theoretical model)

In the Research Limitations section of your Conclusions chapter, you will have inevitably detailed the potential flaws (i.e., research limitations) of your dissertation. These may include:

An inability to answer your research questions

Theoretical and conceptual problems

Limitations of your research strategy

Problems of research quality

Identifying what these research limitations were and proposing future research suggestions that address them is arguably the easiest and quickest ways to complete the Future Research section of your Conclusions chapter.

Often, the findings from your dissertation research will highlight a number of new avenues that could be explored in future studies. These can be grouped into two categories:

Your dissertation will inevitably lead to findings that you did not anticipate from the start. These are useful when making future research suggestions because they can lead to entirely new avenues to explore in future studies. If this was the case, it is worth (a) briefly describing what these unanticipated findings were and (b) suggesting a research strategy that could be used to explore such findings in future.

Sometimes, dissertations manage to address all aspects of the research questions that were set. However, this is seldom the case. Typically, there will be aspects of your research questions that could not be answered. This is not necessarily a flaw in your research strategy, but may simply reflect that fact that the findings did not provide all the answers you hoped for. If this was the case, it is worth (a) briefly describing what aspects of your research questions were not answered and (b) suggesting a research strategy that could be used to explore such aspects in future.

You may want to recommend that future research examines the conceptual framework (or tests the theoretical model) that you developed. This is based on the assumption that the primary goal of your dissertation was to set out a conceptual framework (or build a theoretical model). It is also based on the assumption that whilst such a conceptual framework (or theoretical model) was presented, your dissertation did not attempt to examine (or test) it in the field . The focus of your dissertations was most likely a review of the literature rather than something that involved you conducting primary research.

Whilst it is quite rare for dissertations at the undergraduate and master's level to be primarily theoretical in nature like this, it is not unknown. If this was the case, you should think about how the conceptual framework (or theoretical model) that you have presented could be best examined (or tested) in the field . In understanding the how , you should think about two factors in particular:

What is the context, location and/or culture that would best lend itself to my conceptual framework (or theoretical model) if it were to be examined (or tested) in the field?

What research strategy is most appropriate to examine my conceptual framework (or test my theoretical model)?

If the future research suggestion that you want to make is based on examining your conceptual framework (or testing your theoretical model) in the field , you need to suggest the best scenario for doing so.

More often than not, you will not only have set out a conceptual framework (or theoretical model), as described in the previous section, but you will also have examined (or tested) it in the field . When you do this, focus is typically placed on a specific context, location and/or culture.

If this is the case, the obvious future research suggestion that you could propose would be to examine your conceptual framework (or test the theoretical model) in a new context, location and/or culture. For example, perhaps you focused on consumers (rather than businesses), or Canada (rather than the United Kingdom), or a more individualistic culture like the United States (rather than a more collectivist culture like China).

When you propose a new context, location and/or culture as your future research suggestion, make sure you justify the choice that you make. For example, there may be little value in future studies looking at different cultures if culture is not an important component underlying your conceptual framework (or theoretical model). If you are not sure whether a new context, location or culture is more appropriate, or what new context, location or culture you should select, a review the literature will often help clarify where you focus should be.

Expanding a conceptual framework (or theoretical model)

Assuming that you have set out a conceptual framework (or theoretical model) and examined (or tested) it in the field , another series of future research suggestions comes out of expanding that conceptual framework (or theoretical model).

We talk about a series of future research suggestions because there are so many ways that you can expand on your conceptual framework (or theoretical model). For example, you can do this by:

Examining constructs (or variables) that were included in your conceptual framework (or theoretical model) but were not focused.

Looking at a particular relationship aspect of your conceptual framework (or theoretical model) further.

Adding new constructs (or variables) to the conceptual framework (or theoretical model) you set out (if justified by the literature).

It would be possible to include one or a number of these as future research suggestions. Again, make sure that any suggestions you make have are justified , either by your findings or the literature.

With the dissertation process at the undergraduate and master's level lasting between 3 and 9 months, a lot a can happen in between. For example, a specific event (e.g., 9/11, the economic crisis) or some new theory or evidence that undermines (or questions) the literature (theory) and assumptions underpinning your conceptual framework (or theoretical model). Clearly, there is little you can do about this. However, if this happens, reflecting on it and re-evaluating your conceptual framework (or theoretical model), as well as your findings, is an obvious source of future research suggestions.

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Future Research – Thesis Guide

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Future Research

Definition:

Future research refers to investigations and studies that are yet to be conducted, and are aimed at expanding our understanding of a particular subject or area of interest. Future research is typically based on the current state of knowledge and seeks to address unanswered questions, gaps in knowledge, and new areas of inquiry.

How to Write Future Research in Thesis

Here are some steps to help you write effectively about future research in your thesis :

• Identify a research gap: Before you start writing about future research, identify the areas that need further investigation. Look for research gaps and inconsistencies in the literature , and note them down.
• Specify research questions : Once you have identified a research gap, create a list of research questions that you would like to explore in future research. These research questions should be specific, measurable, and relevant to your thesis.
• Discuss limitations: Be sure to discuss any limitations of your research that may require further exploration. This will help to highlight the need for future research and provide a basis for further investigation.
• Suggest methodologies: Provide suggestions for methodologies that could be used to explore the research questions you have identified. Discuss the pros and cons of each methodology and how they would be suitable for your research.
• Explain significance: Explain the significance of the research you have proposed, and how it will contribute to the field. This will help to justify the need for future research and provide a basis for further investigation.
• Provide a timeline : Provide a timeline for the proposed research , indicating when each stage of the research would be conducted. This will help to give a sense of the practicalities involved in conducting the research.
• Conclusion : Summarize the key points you have made about future research and emphasize the importance of exploring the research questions you have identified.

Examples of Future Research in Thesis

SomeExamples of Future Research in Thesis are as follows:

Future Research:

Although this study provides valuable insights into the effects of social media on self-esteem, there are several avenues for future research that could build upon our findings. Firstly, our sample consisted solely of college students, so it would be beneficial to extend this research to other age groups and demographics. Additionally, our study focused only on the impact of social media use on self-esteem, but there are likely other factors that influence how social media affects individuals, such as personality traits and social support. Future research could examine these factors in greater depth. Lastly, while our study looked at the short-term effects of social media use on self-esteem, it would be interesting to explore the long-term effects over time. This could involve conducting longitudinal studies that follow individuals over a period of several years to assess changes in self-esteem and social media use.

While this study provides important insights into the relationship between sleep patterns and academic performance among college students, there are several avenues for future research that could further advance our understanding of this topic.

• This study relied on self-reported sleep patterns, which may be subject to reporting biases. Future research could benefit from using objective measures of sleep, such as actigraphy or polysomnography, to more accurately assess sleep duration and quality.
• This study focused on academic performance as the outcome variable, but there may be other important outcomes to consider, such as mental health or well-being. Future research could explore the relationship between sleep patterns and these other outcomes.
• This study only included college students, and it is unclear if these findings generalize to other populations, such as high school students or working adults. Future research could investigate whether the relationship between sleep patterns and academic performance varies across different populations.
• Fourth, this study did not explore the potential mechanisms underlying the relationship between sleep patterns and academic performance. Future research could investigate the role of factors such as cognitive functioning, motivation, and stress in this relationship.

Overall, there is a need for continued research on the relationship between sleep patterns and academic performance, as this has important implications for the health and well-being of students.

Further research could investigate the long-term effects of mindfulness-based interventions on mental health outcomes among individuals with chronic pain. A longitudinal study could be conducted to examine the sustainability of mindfulness practices in reducing pain-related distress and improving psychological well-being over time. The study could also explore the potential mediating and moderating factors that influence the relationship between mindfulness and mental health outcomes, such as emotional regulation, pain catastrophizing, and social support.

Purpose of Future Research in Thesis

Here are some general purposes of future research that you might consider including in your thesis:

• To address limitations: Your research may have limitations or unanswered questions that could be addressed by future studies. Identify these limitations and suggest potential areas for further research.
• To extend the research : You may have found interesting results in your research, but future studies could help to extend or replicate your findings. Identify these areas where future research could help to build on your work.
• To explore related topics : Your research may have uncovered related topics that were outside the scope of your study. Suggest areas where future research could explore these related topics in more depth.
• To compare different approaches : Your research may have used a particular methodology or approach, but there may be other approaches that could be compared to your approach. Identify these other approaches and suggest areas where future research could compare and contrast them.
• To test hypotheses : Your research may have generated hypotheses that could be tested in future studies. Identify these hypotheses and suggest areas where future research could test them.
• To address practical implications : Your research may have practical implications that could be explored in future studies. Identify these practical implications and suggest areas where future research could investigate how to apply them in practice.

Applications of Future Research

Some examples of applications of future research that you could include in your thesis are:

• Development of new technologies or methods: If your research involves the development of new technologies or methods, you could discuss potential applications of these innovations in future research or practical settings. For example, if you have developed a new drug delivery system, you could speculate about how it might be used in the treatment of other diseases or conditions.
• Extension of your research: If your research only scratches the surface of a particular topic, you could suggest potential avenues for future research that could build upon your findings. For example, if you have studied the effects of a particular drug on a specific population, you could suggest future research that explores the drug’s effects on different populations or in combination with other treatments.
• Investigation of related topics: If your research is part of a larger field or area of inquiry, you could suggest potential research topics that are related to your work. For example, if you have studied the effects of climate change on a particular species, you could suggest future research that explores the impacts of climate change on other species or ecosystems.
• Testing of hypotheses: If your research has generated hypotheses or theories, you could suggest potential experiments or studies that could test these hypotheses in future research. For example, if you have proposed a new theory about the mechanisms of a particular disease, you could suggest experiments that could test this theory in other populations or in different disease contexts.

Advantage of Future Research

Including future research in a thesis has several advantages:

• Demonstrates critical thinking: Including future research shows that the author has thought deeply about the topic and recognizes its limitations. It also demonstrates that the author is interested in advancing the field and is not satisfied with only providing a narrow analysis of the issue at hand.
• Provides a roadmap for future research : Including future research can help guide researchers in the field by suggesting areas that require further investigation. This can help to prevent researchers from repeating the same work and can lead to more efficient use of resources.
• Shows engagement with the field : By including future research, the author demonstrates their engagement with the field and their understanding of ongoing debates and discussions. This can be especially important for students who are just entering the field and want to show their commitment to ongoing research.
• I ncreases the impact of the thesis : Including future research can help to increase the impact of the thesis by highlighting its potential implications for future research and practical applications. This can help to generate interest in the work and attract attention from researchers and practitioners in the field.

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Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

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• How to Write Recommendations in Research | Examples & Tips

How to Write Recommendations in Research | Examples & Tips

Published on September 15, 2022 by Tegan George . Revised on July 18, 2023.

Recommendations in research are a crucial component of your discussion section and the conclusion of your thesis , dissertation , or research paper .

As you conduct your research and analyze the data you collected , perhaps there are ideas or results that don’t quite fit the scope of your research topic. Or, maybe your results suggest that there are further implications of your results or the causal relationships between previously-studied variables than covered in extant research.

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What should recommendations look like, building your research recommendation, how should your recommendations be written, recommendation in research example, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about recommendations.

Recommendations for future research should be:

• Concrete and specific
• Supported with a clear rationale
• Directly connected to your research

Overall, strive to highlight ways other researchers can reproduce or replicate your results to draw further conclusions, and suggest different directions that future research can take, if applicable.

Relatedly, when making these recommendations, avoid:

• Undermining your own work, but rather offer suggestions on how future studies can build upon it
• Suggesting recommendations actually needed to complete your argument, but rather ensure that your research stands alone on its own merits
• Using recommendations as a place for self-criticism, but rather as a natural extension point for your work

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There are many different ways to frame recommendations, but the easiest is perhaps to follow the formula of research question   conclusion  recommendation. Here’s an example.

Conclusion An important condition for controlling many social skills is mastering language. If children have a better command of language, they can express themselves better and are better able to understand their peers. Opportunities to practice social skills are thus dependent on the development of language skills.

As a rule of thumb, try to limit yourself to only the most relevant future recommendations: ones that stem directly from your work. While you can have multiple recommendations for each research conclusion, it is also acceptable to have one recommendation that is connected to more than one conclusion.

These recommendations should be targeted at your audience, specifically toward peers or colleagues in your field that work on similar subjects to your paper or dissertation topic . They can flow directly from any limitations you found while conducting your work, offering concrete and actionable possibilities for how future research can build on anything that your own work was unable to address at the time of your writing.

See below for a full research recommendation example that you can use as a template to write your own.

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While it may be tempting to present new arguments or evidence in your thesis or disseration conclusion , especially if you have a particularly striking argument you’d like to finish your analysis with, you shouldn’t. Theses and dissertations follow a more formal structure than this.

All your findings and arguments should be presented in the body of the text (more specifically in the discussion section and results section .) The conclusion is meant to summarize and reflect on the evidence and arguments you have already presented, not introduce new ones.

The conclusion of your thesis or dissertation should include the following:

• A restatement of your research question
• A summary of your key arguments and/or results
• A short discussion of the implications of your research

For a stronger dissertation conclusion , avoid including:

• Important evidence or analysis that wasn’t mentioned in the discussion section and results section
• Generic concluding phrases (e.g. “In conclusion …”)
• Weak statements that undermine your argument (e.g., “There are good points on both sides of this issue.”)

Your conclusion should leave the reader with a strong, decisive impression of your work.

In a thesis or dissertation, the discussion is an in-depth exploration of the results, going into detail about the meaning of your findings and citing relevant sources to put them in context.

The conclusion is more shorter and more general: it concisely answers your main research question and makes recommendations based on your overall findings.

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George, T. (2023, July 18). How to Write Recommendations in Research | Examples & Tips. Scribbr. Retrieved August 26, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/recommendations-in-research/

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The future of research: Emerging trends and new directions in scientific inquiry

The world of research is constantly evolving, and staying on top of emerging trends is crucial for advancing scientific inquiry. With the rapid development of technology and the increasing focus on interdisciplinary research, the future of research is filled with exciting opportunities and new directions.

In this article, we will explore the future of research, including emerging trends and new directions in scientific inquiry. We will examine the impact of technological advancements, interdisciplinary research, and other factors that are shaping the future of research.

One of the most significant trends shaping the future of research is the rapid development of technology. From big data analytics to machine learning and artificial intelligence, technology is changing the way we conduct research and opening up new avenues for scientific inquiry. With the ability to process vast amounts of data in real-time, researchers can gain insights into complex problems that were once impossible to solve.

Another important trend in the future of research is the increasing focus on interdisciplinary research. As the boundaries between different fields of study become more fluid, interdisciplinary research is becoming essential for addressing complex problems that require diverse perspectives and expertise. By combining the insights and methods of different fields, researchers can generate new insights and solutions that would not be possible with a single-discipline approach.

One emerging trend in research is the use of virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) to enhance scientific inquiry. VR/AR technologies have the potential to transform the way we conduct experiments, visualize data, and collaborate with other researchers. For example, VR/AR simulations can allow researchers to explore complex data sets in three dimensions, enabling them to identify patterns and relationships that would be difficult to discern in two-dimensional representations.

Another emerging trend in research is the use of open science practices. Open science involves making research data, methods, and findings freely available to the public, facilitating collaboration and transparency in the scientific community. Open science practices can help to accelerate the pace of research by enabling researchers to build on each other’s work more easily and reducing the potential for duplication of effort.

The future of research is also marked by scientific innovation, with new technologies and approaches being developed to address some of the world’s most pressing problems. For example, gene editing technologies like CRISPR-Cas9 have the potential to revolutionize medicine by allowing scientists to edit DNA and cure genetic diseases. Similarly, nanotechnology has the potential to create new materials with unprecedented properties, leading to advances in fields like energy, electronics, and medicine.

One new direction in research is the focus on sustainability and the environment. With climate change and other environmental issues becoming increasingly urgent, researchers are turning their attention to developing sustainable solutions to the world’s problems. This includes everything from developing new materials and technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to developing sustainable agricultural practices that can feed the world’s growing population without damaging the environment.

Another new direction in research is the focus on mental health and wellbeing. With mental health issues becoming increasingly prevalent, researchers are exploring new approaches to understanding and treating mental illness. This includes everything from developing new therapies and medications to exploring the role of lifestyle factors like diet, exercise, and sleep in mental health.

In conclusion, the future of research is filled with exciting opportunities and new directions. By staying on top of emerging trends, embracing interdisciplinary research, and harnessing the power of technological innovation, researchers can make significant contributions to scientific inquiry and address some of the world’s most pressing problems.

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Conclusion and Future Directions

The conclusion and future directions section is the final part of a research paper where the researcher summarizes their findings, discusses the implications of their study, and suggests potential areas for further research.

Related terms

Limitations : These are factors or constraints that may have affected or restricted certain aspects of a research study.

Recommendations : Suggestions made by researchers based on their findings to guide future studies or actions.

Implications : The potential consequences or effects that arise from the results of a research study.

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What are Implications in Research?

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Manuscripts that do not mention the implications of the study are often desk-rejected by journals. What constitutes the ‘implications’ of research, and why is it important to include research implications in your manuscript?

Research implications: An overview

Once you have laid out the key findings in your paper, you have to discuss how they will likely impact the world. What is the significance of your study to policymakers, the lay person, or other researchers? This speculation, made in good faith, constitutes your study’ implications.

A research paper that does not explain the study’s importance in light of its findings exists in a vacuum. The paper may be relevant to you, the author, and some of your co-workers. But it is unclear how others will benefit from reading it.

How can the findings of your study help create a better world? What can we infer from your conclusion about the current state of research in your field or the quality of methods you employed? These are all important implications of your study.

You cannot predict how your study will influence the world or research in the future. You can only make reasonable speculations. In order to ensure that the implications are reasonable, you have to be mindful of the limitations of your study.

In the research context, only speculations supported by data count as valid implications. If the implications you draw do not logically follow the key findings of your study, they may sound overblown or outright preposterous.

Suppose your study evaluated the effects of a new drug in the adult population. In that case, you could not honestly speculate on how the drug will impact paediatric care. Thus, the implications you draw from your study cannot exceed its scope.

Practical implications

Imagine that your study found a popular type of cognitive therapy to be ineffective in treating insomnia. Your findings imply that psychologists using this type of therapy were not seeing actual results but an expectancy effect. Studies that can potentially impact real-world problems by prompting policy change or change in treatments have practical implications.

It can be helpful to understand the difference between an implication of your study and a recommendation. Suppose your study compares two or more types of therapy, ranks them in the order of effectiveness, and explicitly asks clinicians to follow the most effective type. The suggestion made in the end constitutes a ‘recommendation’ and not an ‘implication’.

Theoretical implications

Are your findings in line with previous research? Did your results validate the methods used in previous research or invalidate them? Has your study discovered a new and helpful way to do experiments? Speculations on how your findings can potentially impact research in your field of study are theoretical implications.

The main difference between practical and theoretical implications is that theoretical implications may not be readily helpful to policymakers or the public.

How to Write Implications in Research

Implications usually form an essential part of the conclusion section of a research paper. As we have mentioned in a previous article, this section starts by summarising your work, but this time emphasises your work’s significance .

While writing the implications, it is helpful to ask, “who will benefit the most from reading my paper?”—policymakers, physicians, the public, or other researchers. Once you know your target population, explain how your findings can help them.

Think about how the findings in your study are similar or dissimilar to the findings of previous studies. Your study may reaffirm or disprove the results of other studies. This is an important implication.

Suggest future directions for research in the subject area in light of your findings or further research to confirm your findings. These are also crucial implications.

Do not try to exaggerate your results, and make sure your tone reflects the strength of your findings. If the implications mentioned in your paper are convincing, it can improve visibility for your work and spur similar studies in your field.

For more information on the importance of implications in research, and guidance on how to include them in your manuscript, visit Elsevier Author Services now!

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Futures Research

Futures research can be defined as a systematic study of possible future events and circumstances. As a field of study, futures evolved in 1950s. Futures research is different from forecasting in a way that the former has a forward orientation and looks ahead, rather that backwards, and is not as mathematical as forecasting.

It can be argued that highly dynamic nature of the contemporary global marketplace is making is difficult to conduct quality futures studies. For example, it is now evident that COVID-19 global pandemic has compromised findings of many futures studies. This is because no researcher could foresee the occurrence of extent of implications of pandemic on global business and economics.

Disadvantages of futures research are straightforward – no event or situation can be forecasted in an accurate and complete manner. Nevertheless, futures studies may offer a substantial advantage. Specifically, although futures studies are not able to produce totally accurate and complete information about the future, some researched information about the future is better than no information at all when engaging in decision making for long-term perspective.

There is wide range of techniques available that can be used to conduct futures studies. The following table illustrates types and techniques of the most popular futures techniques.

 Futures research methods techniques

Source:  Millenium Project

The nature of decision-making using the results of futures studies can be approached from four alternative perspectives:

1. Values perspective categorises forecasted outcome of events and occurrences as good or bad.  Accordingly, value perspective tends to be highly subjective due to value differences amongst individuals.

2. Rational perspective relates to selection of an alternative amongst decision options guided by the extent to which each alternative meets certain criteria.

3. Judgement heuristics is associated with tendency towards risk-taking and relying on intuition when engaging in decision making.

4. Cognitive science perspective to decision making relies on inductive process of thought and taking decisions as a result of inductive analysis by individuals, as well as, related computer programs.

If you decide to conduct a futures research for your dissertation you will have to choose a specific method from table above. You will need to discuss advantages and disadvantages of the method selected and also provide rationale for the choice.

My e-book,  The Ultimate Guide to Writing a Dissertation in Business Studies: a step by step assistance  contains discussions of theory and application of research philosophy. The e-book also explains all stages of the  research process  starting from the  selection of the research area  to writing personal reflection. Important elements of dissertations such as  research philosophy ,  research approach ,  research design ,  methods of data collection  and  data analysis  are explained in this e-book in simple words.

[1] Source: Millenium Project

Pharmacokinetics and Drug Interactions in the Elderly and Special Issues in Elderly African-American Populations: Workshop Summary (1997)

Chapter: 3 conclusions and future research directions, conclusions and future research directions.

The ongoing study of pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, and drug interactions in elderly persons is critical for the development of safe and effective therapies and for the prevention of drug toxicities and adverse drug reactions. Aging is associated with an increase in chronic illness and anatomical and physiological changes that affect drug distribution, metabolism, and excretion. Thus, as the number of older Americans increases, it can be expected that polypharmacy in this population will have significant health, social, and economic consequences. Additionally, research should focus on alleviating the disease burden in elderly minority populations.

Box 3.1 summarizes the committee's conclusions regarding future directions for research in this field. The remainder of this chapter provides a more detailed discussion of the committee's conclusions.

RESEARCH NEEDS AND OPPORTUNITIES

Expanding the scientific knowledge base.

Although progress has been made in understanding the aging process, there is still a paucity of data at the intracellular, organ, system, and population levels. The impact of aging on cells and organ systems has commonly been studied in isolation; however, a more integrated approach is needed that will examine the effects of aging on the body. Pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic models need to be developed that encompass the entire range of changes occurring at multiple levels throughout the body.

The following list highlights specific areas of research that would add to the body of knowledge and clarify our understanding of the aging process especially with regard to improving pharmacotherapy. This list is by no means comprehensive, as numerous research avenues could yield important information on the impact of pharmacotherapy and drug interactions in the elderly. Areas for future research include the impact of aging, gender, genetics, and ethnicity on physiology and metabolic processes. Specifically,

age-related changes in cellular transport mechanisms and extrahepatic metabolism and transport including the activity of different enzyme isoforms;

biomarkers of drug exposure;

mechanisms that cause variable responses to medications in aging racial and ethnic populations;

age-related hormonal changes affecting drug metabolism or drug sensitivity;

the impact of nutrition on the aging process;

mechanisms underlying diseases prevalent in the elderly (e.g., hypertension, diabetes, osteoporosis, and Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease);

in vitro models for multiple drug regimens and multiple drug interactions that may be predictive of and correlated with in vivo research;

models for drug interaction related to altered reflex activity and changing homeostatic mechanisms;

the potential beneficial and adverse health effects of nutraceuticals; and

social and psychological aspects of medication use in the elderly (e.g., access to medications, adherence to prescription regimens), with a special emphasis on minority populations.

Addressing Issues in Minority Populations

Many diseases are disproportionately prevalent in elderly African-American and other minority populations. The causes and implications of this excess burden need to be more completely understood and addressed. For example, hypertension and the impact of antihypertensive medications in elderly African Americans have not been fully studied even though the morbidity and mortality is higher in this population than in other segments of the aging population.

Research is needed on multiple levels (molecular, cellular, system, population) to clarify the effect of race and ethnicity on disease prevalence and on variations in the effectiveness of pharmacotherapeutic and other treatment interventions. Such research would be a valuable tool in increasing our understanding of the physiology of aging for all populations and may have implications for pharmacotherapies aimed at various elderly groups. Research on diseases and health conditions that primarily affect minority elderly populations needs to be a priority to alleviate the disease burden experienced by these populations.

Recruitment of Elderly Patients into Clinical Trials

In 1989, the FDA published a guideline for the inclusion of elderly persons in clinical trials (FDA, 1989). However, a number of characteristics of the elderly population may present barriers to conducting clinical trials that are representative of this population. Studies need to include the oldest segment of the population (see Chapter 2 ). In addition, subgroups of the elderly population should be stratified based primarily on their functional status and disease burden and less on their chronological age.

Recruiting minorities for inclusion in studies should be a priority, although it is important to recognize the trends toward multiracial backgrounds and the complexities associated with categorizing race or ethnicity. The workshop speakers presented many innovative ideas about increasing the recruitment of minority populations. The committee supports a number of approaches, including providing transportation, involving the minority community, providing extensive patient education, and decentralizing clinical trials (i.e.., going to patients' homes or to community centers to provide and assess treatment). In addition, collaborative efforts and consortia need to be strengthened between historically minority and other academic institutions. These partnerships will be vital to recruiting minority investigators and to attracting and sustaining minority students in research programs. Further, patient recruitment efforts can draw on the populations available to both institutions.

Obtaining informed consent in elderly populations involves complex issues that need to be addressed including the extent of dementia or cognitive impairment in some elderly patients and their vulnerability to coercion. Informed consent forms have evolved into highly technical legal documents, and a reevaluation of how to best meet their original purpose is needed. Other ethical issues that need to be addressed include studies on vulnerable populations (e.g., nursing home residents) and the confidentiality of patient information.

Research Methodologies and Tools

Trials of acute drug use are well funded; however, there are few long-term studies that examine chronic effects and drug interactions. Inasmuch as elderly persons are living longer and may take the same medications for many years, increased postmarketing surveillance is needed to examine the effects of long-term use of drugs. Incentives to strengthen postmarketing surveillance should be considered. Some of these drugs (e.g., hormone replacement therapy, antidepressants, and lipid-lowering medications) may be used as preventive measures (e.g., treating high cholesterol levels in the absence of cardiovascular disease or prescribing hormone replacement therapy to prevent hip fractures); however, their long-term health effects are not fully known. Further, the pharmacodynamics of many of these medications are only beginning to be investigated.

Research Methodologies

Studying the impact of pharmacotherapy on the elderly population is often difficult from a methodological standpoint. Cross-sectional studies are problematic because confounding variables abound among the elderly, and it is difficult to distinguish the effects of aging from those of disease. Randomized clini-

cal trials often recruit study subjects who represent the younger segments of the elderly population, and who have fewer comorbid conditions, use fewer medications, and may be more compliant in terms of following prescription medication regimens. In addition, many studies use small numbers of patients, frequently with homogenous geographic and ethnic backgrounds. Longitudinal studies are needed that involve large numbers of patients who reflect the diversity of “real world” populations. Furthermore, studies of elderly populations should include observational studies, case-control studies, and cohort studies to take advantage of the realm of methodological approaches that are available. Studies of optimal pharmacotherapies need to consider their cost-effectiveness and delivery. Outcome measures must also be reexamined, and quality-of-life outcomes need to be considered. One workshop speaker recalled the adage that, “adding life to years is at least as important as adding years to life.”

Databases Available for Research

There is a notable lack of adequate databases to research the prevalence and health impact of adverse drug reactions in elderly populations. Prescription information on elderly persons is not currently linked to diagnostic information or health outcomes data. For example, state Medicaid databases are used to reimburse pharmacies for prescriptions, therefore, the data on medication utilization are quite complete and accurate. However, diagnostic information for outpatient care is often incomplete or unavailable, and is not linked to pharmacy utilization databases.

Current changes underway in the health care delivery system may provide opportunities for new databases to be developed, although there are concerns that these changes may instead result in the loss of publicly available data. Trends of interest include the purchase of pharmacy benefit companies by pharmaceutical manufacturers and the increased use of managed care through proprietary health plans paid for by Medicaid and Medicare. Increased use of managed care to provide health care for the elderly offers opportunities for databases to be implemented that would link health outcomes (particularly adverse drug reactions) and prescription information, while paying close attention to patient confidentiality issues. However, these changes may instead be implemented to restructure datasets and require new levels of approval for data use or publishing. It is crucial that the larger issues involving potential censoring or loss of publicly available data on prescription drug use and health outcomes be addressed. The increased privatization of health care services for the elderly may lead to barriers to accessing datasets due to proprietary and competitive interests.

An area of interest to the committee is exploring the feasibility of developing a cooperative national data resource that would expand the researcher's

ability to examine population-based data rather than utilizing a piecemeal approach to data collection. This data resource could include information on diagnosis, medications prescribed, clinical interventions, health outcomes, and other relevant data. Of utmost importance would be maintaining patient confidentiality. This resource could be utilized as a repository to which individual researchers could submit peer-reviewed and approved research questions. Examining the feasibility of developing such a data resource would require the input of patients, health care providers, researchers, ethicists, and other interested persons and groups.

Dissemination of Information

Drug-related information can be complex, and information overload is a common phenomenon among health professionals and patients. Because information regarding drug use and interactions changes rapidly, information systems should be available to health care professionals that can provide up-to-date information that is unbiased, case specific, interactive, and readily accessible. In addition, it is important to develop diverse information dissemination strategies to effectively meet the needs of the heterogeneous elderly population. The information provided should be presented in a manner that can be understood by patients who cannot necessarily process complex information, yet need to make informed decisions and understand their options for treatment. Private- and public-sector initiatives are required to address this critical challenge. Health sciences centers that focus on training medical, nursing, and pharmacy students should be used to conduct independent, unbiased research and continuing education programs for practicing physicians, pharmacists, nurses, and the interested public (Woosley, 1994).

Capacity Building: Researchers and Clinicians

One of the major factors limiting the expansion of research in the area of geriatrics, and particularly geriatric pharmacology and clinical therapeutics, is the small number of health professionals entering this field. This is an area in which, as demographers can attest, the patient base is expanding and will continue to grow. Quality geriatric care depends on the development of multidisciplinary teams (including nursing, physical and occupational therapy, social work) to assess the concomitant problems and implement multiple interventions. However, reimbursements do not adequately cover the time required to handle the complexity of geriatric care. A recent report by the Alliance for Aging Research (1996) found that the United States has less than one fourth the number

of academic physician-scientists needed in geriatrics to teach and conduct research.

There is a pressing need to develop innovative approaches for recruiting and retaining researchers and clinicians. Programs are needed at many points along the career path, beginning early in the college and postbaccalaureate years to kindle an interest in the field of geriatrics and continuing throughout the professional years to retain the best investigators and clinicians available. Recruitment of minority investigators should be included within broader programs supporting young and mid-career investigators. The options available for approaching this issue include

1- to 2-year postbaccalaureate programs to provide research and clinical experience to young people considering a career in this field;

opportunities for medical, nursing, pharmacy, and other health professional students to have additional exposure to geriatric treatment and research during their education;

collaborative efforts between minority academic institutions and academic health sciences centers to encourage minority students to pursue a research program in this field;

loan-forgiveness programs to assist young researchers with high debt loads from health professional or graduate schools;

new sources of fellowships (e.g., through FDA, pharmaceutical companies, or insurance companies);

increased commitment to funding from fellowship training to first awards to independent grant support;

merit awards at the midcareer level and specialized sabbaticals to retrain midcareer professionals; and

retraining in research methodologies during sabbaticals for midcareer level geriatricians.

Currently there is only a limited understanding of the impact of aging on pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, and drug interactions. Research is needed at the molecular, cellular, organ, system, and population levels for safer and more effective medications to be developed, delivered, and utilized by elderly persons. In addition, attention must be given to understanding and alleviating the disproportionate disease burden in elderly African-American and other minority populations.

The committee's major conclusions are summarized in Box 3.1 at the beginning of this chapter. The committee discussed and reflected only on the workshop presentations and acknowledges that there are numerous research

opportunities in geriatric pharmacology that need to be explored. Research in geriatric pharmacology and clinical therapeutics will require a commitment to fund studies that can further elucidate the relationship between pharmacokinetics and adverse drug interactions in the elderly and the complex individual variability of the aging process. Increasing the knowledge base will enable more effective therapeutic interventions and improved quality of life for the growing population of elderly persons.

Alliance for Aging Research. 1996. Will You Still Treat Me When I'm 65? The National Shortage of Geriatricians . Washington, DC: Alliance for Aging Research.

FDA (Food and Drug Administration). 1989. Guideline for the Study of Drugs Likely to Be Used in the Elderly. Rockville, MD: FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.

Woosley RL. 1994. Centers for education and research in therapeutics. Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics 56(6 Part 1):693–697.

Reports in the popular press about the increasing longevity of Americans and the aging of the baby boom generation are constant reminders that the American population is becoming older. Consequently, an issue of growing medical, health policy, and social concern is the appropriate and rational use of medications by the elderly.

Although becoming older does not necessarily correlate with increasing illness, aging is associated with anatomical and physiological changes that affect how medications are metabolized by the body. Furthermore, aging is often related to an increased frequency of chronic illness (often combined with multiple health problems) and an increased use of medications. Thus, a better understanding of the absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion of drugs; of the physiologic responses to those medications; as well as of the interactions among multiple medications is crucial for improving the health of older people.

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Nicolini D, Powell J, Korica M. Keeping knowledgeable: how NHS chief executive officers mobilise knowledge and information in their daily work. Southampton (UK): NIHR Journals Library; 2014 Aug. (Health Services and Delivery Research, No. 2.26.)

Keeping knowledgeable: how NHS chief executive officers mobilise knowledge and information in their daily work.

Chapter 6 conclusions, implications of the study and directions for future research.

In this study, we have sought to respond to a number of research questions related to how knowledge mobilisation is understood, performed and enacted in everyday working practice of NHS trust CEOs in England. We have asked in particular what are the material practices and organisational arrangements through which NHS trust CEOs make themselves knowledgeable, how different types of ‘evidence’ or information are brought to bear in their daily activities, and whether specific organisational arrangements support or hinder their processes of knowledge mobilisation (i.e. what is the practical influence of context on this process). In this chapter, we conclude by briefly foregrounding some of the study’s implications for practice, and some of the directions for future research that stem from the project.

• Implications for practice

Our main aim in this study was to address the almost total lack of research evidence on what it means to mobilise knowledge when operating at the very top of English NHS organisations. We have done so by directly observing and reporting on the daily work of seven trust CEOs, with special attention to the practices whereby these executives made themselves knowledgeable for all practical purposes, as dictated by their specific job.

Accordingly, the first major practical contribution of the present research is that it provides much needed empirical data on the actual jobs of NHS trust CEOs, their mundane preoccupations, what they do most of the time and with what in mind. This information is important given that the only other comparable study dates back more than 30 years. 104 Recounting in depth the activities of CEOs will allow policy-makers, trainers, consultants and others to design initiatives, tools and actions based on what NHS CEOs actually do and where they are now in terms of their practice (rather than what they think they should be doing). For example, authors of policy documents could take note that that most of the time CEOs will not read them directly and are likely to pass them to one of their immediate collaborators. This will allow them to redesign their documents accordingly. Many others could derive similar implications from most of our findings. Our study thus responds to the call made by, among others, Gabbay and Le May, 7 who highlighted as problematic

the glaring disparity between the policy makers’ methods for trying to promote EBP and what social scientists, philosophers, psychologists – and just about anyone who studied such things – have long told us about the nature of knowledge and how it gets used in the real world.

In this sense, we believe that our research is especially timely in the aftermath of the Francis report, 100 which calls on NHS managers to become more open to scrutiny and challenge. If an inaccurate idea of what it means to be ‘evidence-based’ is adopted as a consequence of this (i.e. one that equates EBP with one of the normative models we criticised above), CEOs and other managers may be driven towards a largely ceremonial adoption of EBP. This may result in a focus on creating audit trails of ‘evidence’ before making decisions, rather than improving the practices through which they make themselves knowledgeable; and may result in excluding, rather than giving more prominence to, ‘mundane’ types of evidence, such as patients’ experience. While this type of information could constitute a critical source of intelligence, the risk is that it is disregarded or not valued enough simply because it does not fit the traditional formal idea of what constitutes ‘evidence’.

A second important implication of our study derives from our finding on the uniqueness of the knowledge and information work carried out by NHS CEOs as part of the TMT. Our findings point to a specific set of capabilities, information sources, decision styles and strategies, and attitudes towards knowledge and evidence that may set apart the work of the CEO from that of other members of the executive team. Although analysing our data with a view to identifying and codifying these skills and behaviours goes beyond the remit of the current project, contacts have already been established with the appropriate institutions (including the NHS Leadership Academy and the Institute of Healthcare Management) to explore how this can be achieved collaboratively in the near future.

A third implication stems from our reframing of the issue of how to nurture and support the knowledgeability of CEOs in developmental, rather than instrumental, ways. Our findings suggest in fact that knowledge mobilisation, understood as a series of practices and tools that support, foster or hamper the continually evolving knowledgeability of a CEO, is a personal and organisational capability that can and needs to be learned and refined as one’s perceived context and tasks change over time. Accordingly, our research suggests that we need to abandon the simplistic instrumental view that asks ‘what knowledge products are more suited to CEOs?’ or ‘what technology should we give to CEOs to make them better decision-makers?’ Instead, the issue of how to nurture and support the knowledgeability of CEOs may need to be addressed in terms of how such a capability could be taught, developed and improved through a reflective and continual monitoring of one’s personal infrastructure of knowledgeability.

In this sense, although our research falls short of developing a fully formed diagnostic tool (given its exploratory nature), it clearly signposts the main dimensions of a framework for reflecting on the personal knowledgeability infrastructure of NHS executives. Such dimensions, which derive from our model summarised in Figure 8 above, suggest that executives critically reflect on the following fundamental questions:

• What kind of a manager/CEO do I wish to be, or need to be at the moment in my context?
• What is the nature of my organisational and institutional context right now?
• What is the nature of my work at present (e.g. pace, structures, people)?
• What personal style do I tend to adopt (i.e. where does the CEO sit on the various continua concerning foci of work, e.g. internal/external, operational/strategic)?
• Do I have the right infrastructure in place (both people and objects, e.g. trusted deputies, live IT performance system, informal ward visits) to allow me to be the kind of manager I wish or need to be? If not, what do I need to change?

The framework, which is graphically summarised in Figure 9 , is premised on the notion that each choice of ‘what works’ is individual to the CEO working in situ, and involves certain advantages and drawbacks, which, if they are pragmatically known and continually reflected on and managed by the CEO, can facilitate crucial processes of capacity building over time. The framework also suggests that we should abandon the idea of a silver bullet or ‘one best way’ to address the issue of knowledge mobilisation and how to make managerial work more ‘evidence-based’. The suggestion instead is to embrace more individual-centred and context-sensitive approaches and solutions.

A signposting framework for reflecting on one’s knowledgeability infrastructure.

Finally, our study provides indications to recruiters regarding a number of desirable and necessary skills that future CEOs may need to have or develop in order to carry out their jobs. Again, contacts have been established between the research team and a number of NHS bodies so that the findings of the present study can be incorporated in the existing and future capability-building frameworks.

• Implications for future research

Our study, being of an exploratory and interpretive nature, raises a number of opportunities for future research, both in terms of theory development and concept validation. More research will in fact be necessary to refine and further elaborate our novel findings.

First, while we have generated a number of new and we believe useful conceptual categories, given the in-depth sampling strategy focused on exploring the work of seven trust CEOs, very little can be said of the nature of information work of the larger population of NHS CEOs in England. Our study could thus be extended in search of statistical, rather than analytical, generalisability, as we have sought here.

Second, our study offers the opportunity to refine and validate the concepts and constructs that emerged from our inductive analysis. For example, the idea of a personal knowledgeability infrastructure will need further refinement and elaboration, in terms of both its component elements and its internal dynamics. One could also ask whether and to what extent it is possible to identify different ideal types of knowledgeable managers, so that a typology of managerial forms of knowledgeability can be constructed.

The model discussed in Figure 9 could also be used to generate a number of hypotheses for further empirical testing using a broader sample and quantitative research methods. Questions could include the following:

• Is there a statistical correlation between the type of personal infrastructure of knowledgeability, its elements, and the personality of the CEO (e.g. in terms of Myers–Briggs indicators)?
• Is there a statistical correlation between practices of knowledge mobilisation and other outcome measures, such as financial performance, regulatory compliance or dimensions captured by the NHS Staff Survey?
• Is there a systematic correlation between the types of organisation and the information work carried out by top managers (i.e. are the distinctions we outlined in this report supported by further evidence)?

The study could also be extended in longitudinal and comparative ways. For example, here we have hypothesised that CEOs will adapt their styles and practices of knowledge mobilisation in relation to career development and experience. Further research could elaborate on this point, providing precious information to selection panels and training bodies. Further research could also take a historical perspective and ask if the work of top NHS executives has significantly changed in the last several decades, including a significant shift in skills and attitude (and if it should have occurred). Again, this would provide valuable information to those tasked with selecting or developing top managers in the NHS. Finally, comparative questions can also be asked with regard to differences between executives in the NHS and other health-care systems (e.g. Canada, New Zealand, the USA and Europe), as well as the NHS and other sectors.

Finally, as discussed in Chapter 3 , Limitations of the study , further work is necessary to examine the practices of knowledge mobilisation and information work at the level of the executive management team, and from the particular perspectives of the individual directors, rather than the CEO alone, as we have done here. Further research can thus shed light on the dynamics of knowledge circulation, sharing and exchange among this particular group of individuals, asking what sort of infrastructure they need, both individually and as a group, to support the knowledgeability of the top team. Such research, which could and should examine the processes whereby information and data are turned into actionable ‘evidence’, could also extend to existing and new supporting structures, such as the Academic Health Science Networks, in order to consider their role in practice.

Included under terms of UK Non-commercial Government License .

• Cite this Page Nicolini D, Powell J, Korica M. Keeping knowledgeable: how NHS chief executive officers mobilise knowledge and information in their daily work. Southampton (UK): NIHR Journals Library; 2014 Aug. (Health Services and Delivery Research, No. 2.26.) Chapter 6, Conclusions, implications of the study and directions for future research.
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Future directions in evaluation research: people, organizational, and social issues

Affiliation.

• 1 Kaplan Associates, 59 Morris Street, Hamden, CT 06517, USA. [email protected]
• PMID: 15227551

Objective: To review evaluation literature concerning people, organizational, and social issues and provide recommendations for future research.

Method: Analyze this research and make recommendations.

Results and conclusions: Evaluation research is key in identifying how people, organizational, and social issues - all crucial to system design, development, implementation, and use - interplay with informatics projects. Building on a long history of contributions and using a variety of methods, researchers continue developing evaluation theories and methods while producing significant interesting studies. We recommend that future research: 1) Address concerns of the many individuals involved in or affected by informatics applications. 2) Conduct studies in different type and size sites, and with different scopes of systems and different groups of users. Do multi-site or multi-system comparative studies. 3) Incorporate evaluation into all phases of a project. 4) Study failures, partial successes, and changes in project definition or outcome. 5) Employ evaluation approaches that take account of the shifting nature of health care and project environments, and do formative evaluations. 6) Incorporate people, social, organizational, cultural, and concomitant ethical issues into the mainstream of medical informatics. 7) Diversify research approaches and continue to develop new approaches. 8) Conduct investigations at different levels of analysis. 9) Integrate findings from different applications and contextual settings, different areas of health care, studies in other disciplines, and also work that is not published in traditional research outlets. 10) Develop and test theory to inform both further evaluation research and informatics practice.

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• Bad health informatics can kill--is evaluation the answer? Ammenwerth E, Shaw NT. Ammenwerth E, et al. Methods Inf Med. 2005;44(1):1-3. Methods Inf Med. 2005. PMID: 15778787

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(and hopefully thriving), how to write: future work/conclusions.

This post is the final part of a series on how to write a paper. The first was on  abstracts , the second on  introductions , the third on  related work  and fourth on methodology and analysis of results .

I’m combining future work and conclusions into a single post since they are often found combined in a single section in a paper. While a conclusion is always necessary, sometimes people don’t include future work. While I don’t think it’s always necessary to have a future work section, I would argue that it’s always worthwhile to include some mention of future work.

Let’s start with Future Work .

The future work section is a place for you to explain to your readers where you think the results can lead you. What do you think are the next steps to take? What other questions do your results raise? Do you think certain paths seem to be more promising than others?

Another way to look at the future work section, is a way to sort of “claim” an area of research. This is not to say that others can’t research the same things, but if your paper gets published, it’s out there that you had the idea. This lets people know what you’re thinking of doing next and they may ask to collaborate if your future research area crosses over theirs.

If you do include a future work section, it should be pretty short. The goal should not be to go into a bunch of details, but instead just a sentence or two explaining each idea. It should just provide enough information as to a possible research path and why the path may be important. Motivation is always key in research. I stressed earlier that you need to motivate your research. This also applies to future work. If you can’t motivate a good reason to continue research down some path, then why should/would you?

Conclusions

Conclusions are the last section people read in your paper, and therefore it’s what they leave remembering. You need to make sure they walk away thinking about your paper just the way you want them to.

Your conclusions needs to do three main things:

• Recap what you did. In about one paragraph recap what your research question was and how you tackled it.
• Highlight the big accomplishments. Spend another paragraph explaining the highlights of your results. These are the main results you want the reader to remember after they put down the paper, so ignore any small details.
• Conclude. Finally, finish off with a sentence or two that wraps up your paper. I find this can often be the hardest part to write. You want the paper to feel finished after they read these. One way to do this, is to try and tie your research to the “real world.” Can you somehow relate how your research is important outside of academia? Or, if your results leave you with a big question, finish with that. Put it out there for the reader to think about to.
• Optional  Before you conclude, if you don’t have a future work section, put in a paragraph detailing the questions you think arise from the work and where you think researchers need to be looking next.

Things to not  do in your conclusion:

• Introduce new information. The conclusion is for wrapping up everything you’ve done. It’s not a place to say “oh yeah, and we also got result y.” All results should be first presented and detailed in the result section. Think of the conclusion as a place to reflect on what you’ve already said earlier in the paper.
• Directly re-quote anything you’ve already written. I’ve seen conclusions that are almost identical to the abstract or a collection of sentences from throughout the paper. As a reader, it makes me think the author was lazy and couldn’t be bothered to actually summarize their results for the paper. Take the time to write a proper conclusion so that the reader walks away with good thoughts about your work.
• Write a conclusion longer than your introduction. A conclusion should be short, and to the point. You’ll rarely see them over 3 paragraphs, and three is often long. A lot of the time they are usually only one or two. Think about a conclusion as a chance to see how concisely you can summarize your entire research project. It’s your “30 second” research spiel .

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Reading papers, how much time to write a paper, how to write: introductions, 2 thoughts on “ how to write: future work/conclusions ”.

hi akajb, thanks for sharing this series! it helps me a lot, i hope it will stay online for a long time!

thanks for this. very helpful for my research paper 🙂

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Geopolitics and energy security: a comprehensive exploration of evolution, collaborations, and future directions

• Qiang Wang   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8751-8093 1 , 2 ,
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The intersection of geopolitics and energy security is a critical area of study that has garnered increasing interest from scholars around the globe. This paper employs bibliometric theory and methodologies to explore the research trajectory concerning the influence of geopolitical dynamics on energy security. Our findings, derived from both quantitative and qualitative analysis of relevant literature, reveal several key insights. Firstly, there is a notable upward trend in publications on this topic, reflecting a widespread recognition of the intricate link between geopolitics and energy security. This growing body of research aligns with the exponential growth law observed in scientific literature, showcasing a novel pattern of geographical distribution centered around energy issues. Secondly, an examination of collaboration networks at the national, institutional, and individual levels identifies China as the leading country in terms of research partnerships, positioning Chinese institutions and scholars at the forefront of this field. Lastly, our analysis delineates the research evolution within this domain through three distinct phases—pre-, mid-, and post-development stages. It highlights the shifting focus of global researchers towards the energy transition process, energy policy formulation, the stability of energy markets, and the environmental impacts of energy production and consumption. This study not only maps the current landscape of research on geopolitics and energy security but also signals the critical areas of interest and collaboration that shape this vital field of inquiry.

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Introduction.

Energy, as a productive resource, is essential to ensuring the productive lives of the country’s citizens, it is also a strategic and politically attributed resource and plays an important role in ensuring national security and socio-economic stability (Yang et al., 2022 ). As the world’s industrialization process accelerates, technological advances and industrial expansion continue to drive social development, the extensive demand for energy resources has triggered global concerns about energy security. The concept of energy security is initially concerned with ensuring an uninterrupted and reliable supply of energy to meet a country’s or region’s production needs. However, despite the importance of this issue, there is still no consensus among academics on a definition of energy security. This is because the concept depends on the contextual background and the different national settings (Kruyt et al., 2009 ). The scope of energy security is not limited to energy supply but also encompasses the stability of energy markets, the connectivity of global energy supply chains, and the sustainability of energy resources. Energy security is of paramount importance to the economic stability and growth of countries and regions. A stable energy supply is the foundation for sustaining industrial production, transportation, and daily life. Any disruption in energy supply or sharp price fluctuations will result in higher production costs and increased inflation, thereby affecting economic growth and social stability. In addition, energy security is an important component of national security. Disruptions or shortfalls in energy supplies can lead to social unrest and affect national security (Sivaram and Saha, 2018 ). Therefore, energy security is the key to sustaining economic growth, ensuring political stability, and promoting social well-being (Lee et al., 2022 ). The factors affecting energy security are multifaceted, among which the impact of geopolitical risks on energy security cannot be ignored. Geopolitics is defined as the risks associated with war, terrorism, and inter-State tensions that affects the normalization of international relations and the peace process (Lee and Wang, 2021 ). First of all, the political stability of energy-supplying countries has a direct impact on the reliability of their energy exports. Factors such as political instability, civil unrest, and war can lead to disruptions in energy production and transportation, thus threatening the stability of the global energy supply chain. For instance, instances of political unrest and conflict in the Middle East frequently resulted in disruptions to the oil supply, which in turn gave rise to pronounced fluctuations in the price of oil on the international market (Ben Cheikh and Ben Zaied, 2023 ). The ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine has also resulted in significant fluctuations in the prices of oil and gas (Zhao et al., 2023 ). Secondly, the establishment and maintenance of diplomatic relations between countries also have a significant impact on energy security. International sanctions, trade disputes, and diplomatic conflicts may restrict energy imports or exports, thereby exposing countries that are dependent on imported energy to the risk of supply shortages and price increases (Zhang et al., 2024 ). The relationship between Russia and the West served as an illustrative example of the manner in which geopolitical tensions can give rise to increased uncertainty regarding the supply of gas, which in turn affected Europe’s energy security (Slakaityte et al., 2023 ). In addition, geopolitical risks include the security of energy transportation corridors, such as security threats to maritime transportation routes (Desogus et al., 2023 ). A significant disruption to the global energy market would result from the threat or actual blocking of important transportation corridors, such as the Strait of Hormuz or the Strait of Malacca (Meza et al., 2022 ). Furthermore, in the global transition to renewable energy, the deployment of renewable energy is also influenced by geopolitical risks. Countries experiencing geopolitical turmoil exhibited lower levels of domestic consumption and reduced government investment in renewable energy-related infrastructure and technology (Alsagr and van Hemmen, 2021 ). Despite research suggesting that geopolitics contributes to the deployment of renewable energy competition for fossil energy sources, such as oil, leads countries to seek out alternative energy sources (Ben Cheikh and Ben Zaied, 2023 ). The intrinsic link between geopolitics and energy security needs to be urgently addressed as countries grapple with the complexities of conserving energy resources in an environment of uncertainty.

Researches on geopolitical risk and energy security in global studies are multifaceted, and most studies used different empirical methods to shed light on the complex relationship between them. Using panel GMM and VAR models, Bin Zhang et al. empirically analyzed the impact of geopolitical risk on China’s energy security from 1994 to 2021. Their findings explained the dynamic relationship between geopolitical risk and energy security, geopolitical risk didn’t necessarily harm energy security and confirmed the existence of a bidirectional causal relationship between the two. In this context, the establishment of stable and fluid international relations was essential for the maintenance of national energy security (Zhang et al., 2023a ). Similarly, in a recent study, Chien-Chiang Lee et al. also identified a two-way impact of geopolitical risk on energy security (Lee et al., 2024 ). Khalid Khan et al. investigated the causal relationship between geopolitical risk and energy security using a full-sample analysis of time series. They assessed the interaction between the two in the time dimension in conjunction with graphs of changes in geopolitical risk indicators, demonstrating that geopolitical risk was inextricably linked to energy security (Khan et al., 2023 ). Geotao Hu et al. used the natural discontinuity grading method to classify 102 countries around the world into energy security levels and studied the game relationship between energy security and geopolitical risk, and their study revealed the focus of the game between them (Hu et al., 2022 ). Indra Overland et al. addressed the geopolitical impacts that countries around the globe were likely to experience as a result of their energy transitions, proposing indicators to measure the geopolitical gains or losses of countries after the transition, and predicting the geopolitical impacts of countries after they have realized their energy transitions (Overland et al., 2019 ). Since the emergence of the topic of energy security and geopolitics, a considerable number of research studies have been conducted, and the number of literature reviews synthesizing the research findings has gradually increased. Early in the publication, Benjamin K. Sovacool et al. discussed definitions and metrics for energy security (Sovacool and Mukherjee, 2011 ). And definitions, dimensions, and metrics of energy security were examined by B.W. Ang et al. Their study identified 83 definitions of energy security that have emerged from previous literature as well as seven major themes in the field of energy security, which need to be further constructed to provide an in-depth measure of energy security (Ang et al., 2015 ), similarly, Abdelrahman Azzuni and colleagues conducted a comprehensive review of the literature on the definition and dimensions of energy security. Their analysis identified and categorized 15 distinct dimensions and related parameters of energy security (Azzuni and Breyer, 2018 ). C.J. Axon and colleagues approached the subject from the standpoint of sustainability versus risk in their examination of the role of risk in energy security assessments (Axon and Darton, 2021 ), Mathieu Blondeel et al. attempted to consider the energy system transition through a “whole-system” perspective, encompassing both the “high-carbon energy transition” and the “low-carbon energy transition”. They also addressed geopolitical considerations pertinent to the energy system transition (Blondeel et al., 2021 ). The findings of research on the two subjects failed to yield consistent results. The current research lacks a structural understanding of the overall research topic. The research sub-directions are diverse and dynamic, and it is not possible to grasp the future direction of research and the emerging trends. Therefore, it is crucial to grasp the main lines of this research direction among the many studies and to reveal the focus between the different studies, this requires a systematic review of published scholarly work using a comprehensive study. The bibliometric approach is based precisely on the cross-citation relationships between literature, through emergence detection, spectral clustering, and other techniques, the conceptual trends, thematic evolution, and future development trends of the research field can be further analyzed and the pioneering achievements and key research groups in the research field can be objectively identified. Academic papers are scarce in the subject area that use bibliometric methods to explore hotspot preambles, Wei Zhou et al. conducted a bibliometric analysis of publications on energy security from 2000 to 2017, and their findings revealed the composition of research at the time, identified early features of research in the field, and suggested future research directions (Zhou et al., 2018 ). In a recent study, Yuyan Jiang and colleagues employed data from 2005 to 2023 to ascertain the present state and projected trajectory of recent research in the field of energy security (Jiang and Liu, 2023 ). Their study critically examined the content structure of scholarly publications on energy security over the timeframe of their research, and although energy security often appeared alongside geopolitical risk, their study didn’t explicitly include geopolitical risk in the framework of their research, but evaluating scholarly movements following the linkage between the two. Therefore, our research employed a systematic methodological paradigm aimed at comprehensively integrating and analyzing scientific publications related to energy security and geopolitics. It was not limited to traditional bibliometric analysis, but the systematic integration and analysis of a large amount of literature through data retrieval and deep text mining techniques. Specifically, the innovations and contributions of this study are as follows. Firstly, we collected and organized scientific publications on energy security and geopolitics globally, establishing a sample literature database closely related to the research topic. Based on this sample database, we conducted a compositional analysis of the research content in this field, deeply exploring the level of scientific contributions of different research subjects (such as academic institutions, countries, research teams, etc.). This analysis revealed the research focus and academic influence of each subject in this field. Secondly, we conducted a detailed analysis of topic flows and citation networks in the literature through the use of advanced text mining and topic modeling techniques. This analysis revealed important knowledge sources and core literature within the field of energy security and geopolitics, as well as demonstrating the process of knowledge iteration. By analyzing current research trends and the dynamic changes in the citation network, it is possible to scientifically foresee the new research directions and hot issues that may emerge in the field, which provides a reference for academics and policymakers and helps to guide future research and policy development.

The remaining parts of this study are organized as follows. Section “Research method” and section “Research design” provide the research methodology and research framework of the study, which focuse on the theories used in the study along with the important steps of the study. Section “Results” analyzes the results of the study, and Section “Conclusions, implications, and limitations” summarizes the full text, pointing out the shortcomings of the study and making suggestions for future research.

Research method

Bibliometrics.

Bibliometrics is a comprehensive analytical technique that combines various disciplines such as statistics, informatics, and mathematics (Andrade-Valbuena et al., 2019 ), and it has been widely used to assess the social and intellectual roots of disciplines (Wang et al., 2021 ). It has been argued that, if used properly, bibliometrics can determine research funding allocations, set research priorities, map scientific developments, and reward performance. Lotka’s Law, Bradford’s Law, Zipf’s Law, Price’s Law, the law of literature aging, and the law of literature citation laid the theoretical foundations for the bibliometric development (Venable et al., 2014 ). This study mainly applied the six basic laws of Price’s Law, Lotka’s Law, and Bradford’s Law to explore trends in literature growth, core author productivity, and core journals in the field.

Performance analysis

Performance analysis in bibliometric research examines the important contribution of research components to the field of study (Donthu et al., 2021 ). Performance evaluation of individuals, institutions, and countries by counting the number of publications owned by different subjects. The number of publications measures scientific productivity, and a high number of publications maps to high scientific productivity (Caputo et al., 2021 ). Furthermore, to assess the quality of publications, the total number of citations received by a publication is employed as a measurement indicator. Publications with a high number of citations are deemed to be widely recognized within the industry and to exert a considerable influence. This study first summarized the publication production patterns of geopolitical studies on energy security by calculating the annual distribution of publication levels and predicting the growth trajectory of future publications, then followed by computational analysis of trends in the geographical distribution of national publications, institutional publications and authors’ publications, evaluating the research contributions to the field from macro, meso, and micro perspectives.

Collaborative network analysis

Collaborative research is an important form of scientific research, a behavioral activity undertaken by researchers to achieve the goal of producing new scientific knowledge, it facilitates cross-fertilization of different disciplines and promotes the generation and development of new knowledge (Lee and Bozeman, 2016 ). Collaborative research is usually presented in the form of co-authored papers, where researchers affiliates with different countries and institutions work together to produce knowledge (He et al., 2021 ). Scientific collaboration enhances the quality of research outputs, as evidenced by studies indicating that collaborative publications are cited more often than those created alone, especially for highly internationalized research papers (Adams et al., 2018 ; Gorraiz et al., 2012 ). In other words, a research paper will be more widely recognized in the field if it is co-authored by multiple countries and multiple authors. This study examined the structure of research based on the static attributes of the research scholars, which reflected the identity attributes of the researchers within the academic field, including the researchers’ institutions and countries (Liu et al., 2024 ). Consequently, both national and institutional collaboration are founded upon the basis of author collaboration, which represents the most fundamental unit of collaboration. The visualization of collaboration between research scholars, research institutions, or countries is presented through the collaboration network. Collaborative network is an undirected network used to describe inter-subjective collaborative relationships and patterns based on collaboration conducted by different researchers, nodes in a network represent research individuals, such as nodes in a country collaboration network represent country attributes. Node size represents the number of publications, and the connecting lines of the nodes usually indicate the collaboration between different subjects, and the thickness of the connecting lines correspondingly indicates the intensity of collaboration, if the collaboration between two subjects is more frequent, then it is represented as a thicker connecting line (Jin et al., 2020 ). The process by which scientific research collaboration is formed is illustrated in Fig. 1 .

This figure shows the process of collaboration formation: on the far left is the number of authors in the article, followed by the authors’ affiliations, then followed by a collaboration matrix based on the authors’ collaborations in the article, and on the far right is the collaboration network based on the matrix.

This study mapped country collaborative networks, institutional collaborative networks, and author collaborative networks to explore whether differences in geographic location played a role in international collaborative behavior, as well as to reveal the number and characteristics of institutional and author collaborative groups in the area.

Keywords analysis

In bibliometric studies, article keywords are often used to identify the main research and hot topics, for keywords are important textual elements that summarize the main research content of a scholarly publication (Li et al., 2016 ), the frequency of occurrence of a keyword reflects the importance of the word in the text, high-frequency keywords often represent important topics. The distance between keywords reflects the relevance of different keywords, with higher-relevance keywords clustered closer to each other and forming keyword clusters (Huang et al., 2019 ). Different clusters of keywords map different topics in the research field. Therefore, to identify the distribution of core themes in the study of geopolitical impacts on energy security and their evolutionary paths, we used the keyword co-occurrence method to analyze the co-occurrence of keywords from all the collected literature and explored the resulting keyword clusters in depth to identify future research directions and research focus in the field.

Science mapping analysis

Data visualization can intuitively express important node information such as group structure in a network, and is an important characterization method for processing large amounts of data. VOSviewer provides visualization of the similarity of node distances, allows users to create networks of countries, institutions, and author collaborations, and provides three network graph representations: clustering view, time view, and density view (van Eck and Waltman, 2010 ), and it can handle large amounts of literature data (Van Eck and Waltman, 2007 ). In this study, we used VOSviewer to map collaborative network, literature citation network, and keyword co-occurrence network, during the threshold setting process, we chose the full-count method, in which a paper co-authored by two subjects is attributed to each author in the paper, and the smallest unit in the network was also set to be 1, which can fully demonstrate the structure of knowledge collaboration and actors in the research field of this topic, and then clustering view and temporal view of collaborative network were formed. Gephi was used to map the performance networks of institutions and journals, it offers several layout methods to display network graphs according to their weights (Bastian et al., 2009 ). In addition, we used a bibliometric package in the Rstudio programming (Aria and Cuccurullo, 2017 ) to obtain accurate information on the distribution of literature. Also, the statistical analysis of this study was calculated by Microsoft Excel.

Research design

Data sources and processing.

In this study, the basic bibliographic information was obtained from the core collection of the Web of Science (WOS), Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI), Conference Proceedings Citation Index (CPCI-S), and Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) are included in the core collection, which is widely used in bibliometric studies. The definition of energy security is of great importance in identifying search terms, as it delineates the crucial aspects of energy security and its scope. However, the definition of energy security is context-dependent and subject-dependent and has not yet resulted in a concept that is uniformly used in the industry (Kruyt et al., 2009 ). The historical definitions of energy security have initially focused on the stability of access to fossil fuels, particularly oil (Strojny et al., 2023 ). The increased use of natural gas and other fuels, such as coal, has also expanded the scope of energy security. The distribution of fossil fuels has led to the gradual inclusion of economic attributes in the attributes of energy security, as oil has become a globally traded commodity (Jenny, 2007 ; Wang et al., 2022 ). Energy prices, energy trade, and the stability of energy markets all play a crucial role in energy security. Secondly, the energy trading process is susceptible to the risk of supply chain disruptions due to the inherent vulnerability of energy supply chains to transportation risks, particularly given the considerable distances over which energy is transported (Scheepers et al., 2006 ; Spanjer, 2007 ). Security of energy supply has also become an important part of energy security concerns. Finally, in the process of energy transition, the transition from fossil energy to clean energy requires ensuring the stability and continuity of clean energy supply. At the same time, based on geopolitical considerations of energy security, energy cooperation may be effective in minimizing geopolitical conflicts due to the competition for energy resources and in ensuring the security of energy supply. Accordingly, the selection of keywords in this section was comprehensive and aligned with the fundamental elements of the conceptual framework of energy security, including “energy security”, “energy risks”, “energy supply risks”, “energy cooperation”, “energy transition”, “energy transportation”, “energy markets”, “energy price”, “energy trade” as search keywords. Subsequently, we broke down the term “energy” in “energy security” according to the nature of the energy source, subdividing it into “coal”, “oil”, “natural gas”, “electricity”, “wind”, “nuclear”, “water energy”, while adding “renewable energy” and “clean energy” on this basis. The combination of these two subsections of keywords constituted a searchable formula for the retrieval of academic results that were closely related to the topic of “energy security”. The second section concerned subject words related to geopolitical risk, as investigated by Jiangli Yu and Ahmet Faruk Aysan et al. (Aysan et al., 2023 ; Yu et al., 2023 ), the keywords of geopolitical risk were set as “geopolitical risk”, “geopolitics”, “international conflict”, “international geopolitics”, and “geopolitics”. To retrieve data, the search field designated as “Topic” was utilized, which means a topic search is conducted within the article’s title, abstract, keywords, and keywords plus. Data was accessed on January 7, 2024, and the period was set to all years. To obtain a high-quality data source, we first restricted the publication types, conference papers, editorial materials, letters, notes, book chapters, and book review types of articles were excluded, and only articles and review articles were included in the study, followed by restricting the language to English. Then we analyzed the titles and abstracts of the retrieved papers, and in some cases, even the entire contents of some papers, to determine whether each paper focused on the topic. It’s worth mentioning that even though we tried to find the most relevant papers through the search strategy described above, there were still some irrelevant papers because different authors have their own styles to highlight their articles. Ultimately, we obtained 429 papers for the bibliometric analysis.

Research framework

The occurrence of geopolitical events has had a significant impact on global energy activities, economic trade, and cooperative exchanges. This study utilized data from literature titles included in the Web of Science core collection to examine the impact of geopolitical risk on energy security. Breaking away from the traditional method of organizing a literature review, this study provided an in-depth analysis of the impact of the presence of geopolitical risks on the research field of energy security in terms of the historical development of publications, the geographical distribution, the scientific collaboration, the evolution of the knowledge base and research hotspots in this research field.

The traditional literature review is a method of summarizing and evaluating the existing literature in a particular field of study. This is typically conducted by a researcher who selects, reads, and summarizes relevant literature based on their research experience and expertise (Cronin, 2011 ). Its purpose is to provide background information on a research topic, demonstrate the progress of research in the field, and identify major research findings, theoretical perspectives, and problems, thereby providing references and insights for further study (Li and Wang, 2018 ; Rozas and Klein, 2010 ). The absence of strict procedural constraints in a systematic and standardized process may result in the researcher’s subjective bias influencing the selection and evaluation of literature, thereby reducing the reliability and comprehensiveness of the results of the review. In contrast, the bibliometric method is founded upon the external characteristics and internal connections of the literature. It is based on a series of rigorous procedures for the inclusion and exclusion of literature, as well as general research steps, which are employed to study the temporal distribution, quantitative characteristics, and patterns of change of a given topic. It incorporates a greater quantity of literature, employing mathematical and statistical methods to analyze the research profile of a given topic at a macro level (Kirby, 2023 ). Furthermore, bibliometric offers a significant advantage in the analysis of citation relationships among literature, which is not feasible within a limited timeframe with a traditional literature review. The bibliometric builds citation-coupling networks, co-citation networks, collaborative networks, and co-occurrence networks in the literature, which can predict future research directions in the forward direction, analyze the knowledge base underlying the subject area in the backward direction, and dynamically present the thematic evolution of the research field, as well as identify outstanding contributors and important literature in a particular field (McBurney and Novak, 2002 ; Ninkov et al., 2022 ). In conclusion, the traditional literature review is concerned with the analysis of the research content and findings presented in the literature, to summarize and analyze previous research and identify future research directions. Instead, bibliometric is more concerned with the analysis of the distribution and change of research results in a given field. The research results in a certain field can be assessed regarding the number of research and citation relationships. This allows for the impact of academic research to be evaluated, the academic frontiers and hotspots to be discovered, and research management and decision-making to be facilitated. Therefore, this paper referred to the methodology of F. De Felice et al. using hierarchical analysis for the analysis and discussion of the bibliometric study (De Felice et al., 2018 ), specifically, structured modeling was carried out according to the following four steps:

First, identify the research objectives and the research questions to be addressed. During this stage, the research perspective was further focused on the field of energy security through extensive reading on the impact of geopolitical risks on global economic trade, energy activities, education, and scientific research cooperation.

Second, select the research methodology. By breaking down the research questions and research objectives, the appropriate research methodology was selected, along with the time and scope of the study.

Third, identify keywords and construct a search formula. In this stage, by discussing with experts and scholars and reading the basic research about the field, we extracted the representative key phrases of the research field, constructed the search formula, searched in the database, and de-weighted and cleaned the data.

Fourth, data visualization and analysis. After data collection and data cleaning, the data were calculated, and through various data visualization tools, the collected literature data were visually characterized and analyzed to visualize and understand the development trend, distribution range, and research status of the research field. The roadmap of the research conducted in this study is shown in Fig. 2 .

This figure depicts the research roadmap of this paper. The right side of the figure illustrates the research content of this paper while the left side depicts the research process corresponding to the research content of this paper.

Descriptive statistics of literature information

The basic information about the literature data used in this study is given in Table 1 . The study period runs from 2003 to 2023 and involves a total of 429 publications from 135 journals, with an average half-life of publications of 4.04 years, 19,847 references are cited in these publications. In addition, the author’s keywords and keywords plus used to conduct topic exploration are identified 1136 and 732 respectively, through which the article analyzed the main research trends in this research area. In publications studying the impact of geopolitics on energy security, 1001 authors are involved in the process of knowledge creation, of which 73 authors conducte their research independently.

Publication trend

Thomas Kuhn in The nature of scientific revolutions proposed that the process of scientific development is a “primitive science” to “conventional science” transformation, as well as the transition from one “conventional science” to another “conventional science” process. It was divided into several stages: the scientific development of the pre-scientific, conventional science, scientific crises, scientific revolutions and the new conventional science. The formation of a discipline has undergone a theoretical accumulation of the formation of the paradigm to the paradigm of paradigm change, and then produce a new paradigm of the process of the entire process of scientific development under the impetus of scientific revolutions, the entire scientific development process of the continuous cycle of development (Kuhn, 1970 ). Price’s proposed literature growth curve is consistent with Thomas Kuhn’s theory of scientific development, he believed that the growth of the literature shows a logical growth trend of the “S” curve, but the growth of the literature is not endless and will eventually stop at a certain K (Price, 1963 ). The mathematical expression for the theoretical model of the literature growth by the logistic curve is shown below:

where \(F\left(t\right)\) is the literature accumulation for the year, \(t\) is the time, \(k\) is the literature accumulation when the time tends to infinity, and is the maximum value of the literature accumulation, and \(a,{b}\) are the conditional parameters.

To examine trends and forecast future developments in the growth of publications related to geopolitics and energy security, and to test whether the growth of the literature in this area conforms to a logistic growth curve, we fit a logistic to the annual cumulative publications. The trend in annual cumulative publication growth was first fitted using Excel, and it was found that the cumulative literature was optimally fitted according to the exponential, which got \({R}^{2}=0.9873\) . Subsequently, according to the curve trend to take k  = 90,000, to determine \(a=1.9\) when the most consistent with the cumulative curve, at this time to get \(b=0.2576\) , and ultimately got the logistic growth curve as shown in Fig. 3 , the cumulative annual growth in the number of publications in the field of research in line with \(y=1.9{{\rm {e}}}^{0.2576t}\) . Comparison with the logistic growth curve reveals that the growth of literature in the field is currently in the pre-growth phase of the logistic curve and may reach the horizontal phase of the logistic curve after the next few decades. In the pre-growth phase, the annual number of publications increases significantly in 2022–2023, from 65 to 135, probably due to the impact of the Russia–Ukraine conflict in 2022, which has redirected people’s attention to the study of geopolitics and energy security.

This figure illustrates the growth trend of literature in the study area, with the horizontal axis representing time and the vertical axis indicating the cumulative number of publications. The smaller part of the graph depicts the detailed trend of annual and cumulative numbers of articles published.

Geographical spatial distribution

Spatial analysis of geographic distribution can reveal collaborative networks related to the geographic distribution of publications. Therefore, Scimago and VOSviewer were combined to map the geographic collaborative network of national issuance volumes. A geo-visualization network of the distribution of publications and the collaboration between countries is shown in Fig. 4a and b . The area of the circles in the graph indicates how many publications there are, with larger circles representing more publications, and the connecting lines between the nodes of the different circles indicating the collaboration between countries. In terms of the geographical distribution of publications, countries in Asia, Europe, Australia, and the Americas make the greatest contribution to this field. Among Asian countries, China coveres 168 publications and have the highest number of publications in this field, followed by the United Kingdom (60), the United States of America (43), Germany (26), and Turkey (24). Most of the countries in Europe are involved in research outputs in this area, in addition to countries in the Middle East, which may be attributed to the increased interest in research related to oil security in the region due to resource abundance.

a Global geographic distribution of publications and collaboration networks. b Localized zoomed-in view of the collaboration network. c Chord map of the intensity of country collaboration. This figure illustrates a geographic network of collaboration in the field of geopolitics and energy security. Nodes indicate countries, with size indicating the number of country postings. Connecting lines indicate collaborations between countries. a indicates the global collaboration network of countries, b indicates the detailed collaboration networks in Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia, and c indicates the country collaboration chord map.

Nevertheless, an exclusive emphasis on the number of national publications to assess a country’s scientific output is inadequate. The quantity of publications in a country merely reflects its quantitative capacity, without incorporating the quality of these publications into the evaluation. Therefore, considering the availability of data, we counted the total number of citations of the countries through VOSviewer, ranked the two indicators, the number of publications of the countries and the total number of citations by entropy-weighted TOPSIS, and evaluated them using SPSSAU (project. T S, 2024 ), which evaluates the 67 countries that participated in the publications. The entropy-weighted TOPSIS initially identifies the positive and negative ideal solution values (A+ and A−) for the evaluation indexes. Thereafter, the distance values D+ and D− are calculated for each evaluation object concerning the positive and negative ideal solutions, respectively. Finally, the proximity of each evaluation object to the optimal solution ( C ) is determined, and the C is ranked. The final ranking of the top 10 countries is presented in Table 2 .

As illustrated in the accompanying table, the composition of the top ten countries differes when considering both the quantity and quality of publications. China retains its position at the top of the list, with 168 publications garnering 3608 citations from scientists across the globe. The reasons may be explained in the following ways. Firstly, as the world’s largest energy consumer, China’s rapid economic growth has led to an ever-increasing demand for energy, which has driven a significant number of studies and publications on energy security and geopolitics. Secondly, the Chinese government attached great importance to energy security and geopolitics and has formulated a series of policies and strategies, as well as provided strong support and funding to promote research and development in related fields. Furthermore, China is a highly active participant in international collaboration and academic exchanges. With the advancement of the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s influence in the global energy market is increasing, which has led to a significant increase in the international attention and citation value of its research results. The second-ranked country is the United Kingdom, which has a total of 60 publications with a total of 2139 citations, and the third-ranked country is Pakistan, which has 22 publications with a total of 1407 citations.

In the national collaboration on publications, the study of geopolitics on energy security involves a total of 67 countries around the world, of which 59 countries have collaborative relationships. From the chord diagram of international research collaboration, the depth of the color of the connecting lines between countries indicates the intensity of their collaboration. In Fig. 4c , the color of the connecting line between China and the United Kingdom, the United States, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Spain, and Vietnam is red, which indicates that the intensity of collaboration between China and these countries is higher than that between other countries and that China has more partners and higher collaboration credits in this field of research. In addition, it is found that the geographic distribution of articles in studies of geopolitics and energy security shows a clear energy-oriented country or geopolitical risk-oriented country, unlike previous academic research, the main geographic distribution of publications in this subject area is concentrated in energy-rich or geopolitically risk-intensive areas, gradually moving away from the geographic distribution trend where the level of economic development leads to the distribution of scientific research.

Contribution of institution

In terms of meso-institutional collaboration, a total of 686 institutions around the world are involved in the research, forming a large network of institutional collaboration. The number of publications and the collaboration between them is shown in Fig. 5 . As can be seen from Fig. 5 , Qingdao University (China) has an outstanding research performance in this field, with 23 publications and a total of 782 citations. Meanwhile, Qingdao University has formed collaborative relationships with 33 domestic and foreign organizations, and the intensity of collaboration is 53. These institutions include the Lebanese American University, the Central University of Punjab, and the University of Southampton. The organizations within China are Qilu University of Technology, Southwest Jiaotong University, and Anhui University of Finance and Economics. The study of geopolitical impacts on energy security has resulted in 27 collaborative groups, which have worked together on a wide range of research topics.

This figure depicts a collaborative network of institutions. Nodes represent institutions, and lines between nodes indicate collaborative relationships between institutions. Nodes of the same color indicate similar research content.

Contribution of author

Core author distribution.

Lotka’s Law describes the distribution of the frequency of scientific productivity: in a given field of study, the number of authors writing \(n\) papers are approximately \(\frac{1}{{n}^{2}}\) of the number of authors writing 1 paper. The proportion of all authors writing 1 paper to the total number of authors is approximately 60% (Lotka, 1926 ; Tsai, 2015 ). To test whether Lotka’s Law applies to this field of study, we analyzed it using Lotka’s Law and verified the reliability of the law using nonparametric hypothesis testing. The K–S test is a useful nonparametric hypothesis testing method that is primarily used to test whether a set of samples comes from a certain probability distribution. We followed the following steps to test.

Firstly, the data used for the calculations were prepared according to Table 3 , which shows the number of authors with \(x\) publications, the total number of publications, the cumulative number of publications and the cumulative number of authors, as well as the cumulative percentage.

Secondly, the data in Table 4 were used to calculate the exponent of Lotka’s Law, which was calculated from the least squares formula:

Thus, the absolute value of the exponent \(n\) is between 1.2 and 3.8, in accordance with Lotka’s Law.

Subsequently, \(c\) and critical value were calculated by the following equation:

Calculated to get c  = 0.7907, \({{\rm {critical}}\; {\rm {value}}}=0.3781\) .

Finally, a nonparametric hypothesis test K–S test in Table 5 was conducted to test the reliability of Lotka’s Law.

Therefore, the absolute value \({D}_{\max }=0.0839\, < \,0.3781\) was calculated by the above steps, and hence it can be concluded that Lotka’s Law is valid in this subject area.

Co-author network

From the above analysis, it is clear that the author-output pattern of geopolitical impact on energy security is consistent with Lotka’s Law, to further explore patterns of author collaboration in this area, we used VOSviewer to map the network of author collaborations.

As shown in Fig. 6 , there are 13 author collaborations in academic publications that examine the impact of geopolitics on energy security. One of the outstanding contributing authors in the field is Su Chi-Wei, who has contributed 14 scholarly publications and forms a collaborative cluster with 40 other authors. This is followed by Khan, Khalid (11 publications) with collaborative links with 32 authors, Umair, Muhammad (10 publications) with academic collaborations with 28 authors, and Qin, Meng, and Ma, Feng who have the same number of publications, both contributing 7 articles to the academic community. But Ma, Feng has more collaborations with other researchers, collaborating with 23 researchers, while Qin, Meng has collaborations with 21 authors. As shown in (a) of Fig. 6 , among the top 5 authors in terms of number of publications, three authors are from China. In addition, from the time plot of the authors’ publication volume and collaborative networks, the node colors are dark to light indicating that the authors published their research papers from far to near. The collaborative cluster of authors led by Ma, Feng has a long-standing interest in this research area, with their research focusing on the market impact of uncertainty in geopolitical risk and volatility in crude oil prices. Su chi-wei, Khan, Khalid, Umair, Muhammad, and Qin, Meng are late researching this area. Their team published papers between 2021 and 2023 that examined the interactions between renewable energy, the energy transition, oil prices, and geopolitical risks. These contributions have helped to advance the field. It can also be seen in Fig. 6 that in the fringe group of the author collaboration network, the fringe authors tend to be publishers of recent publications and have not yet formed larger collaborative clusters and these fringe authors may be transformed into center authors in future studies.

a Collaboration network of the top 5 authors in terms of number of publications. b Author collaborative evolutionary networks. This figure depicts the authors’ collaborative network and its temporal evolution. Nodes represent authors, and connecting lines between nodes indicate collaborative relationships between them. Nodes of the same color indicate similar research content.

Contribution of journals

The geopolitical impact on energy security cuts across multiple disciplinary areas and has been analyzed from multiple publications, with the contribution of journals to the field assessed through the number of articles published in them. Information on the types of journals that ranks among the top 10 by the number of articles published in the field is shown in Table 6 . Resources Policy has the highest focus on the topic of geopolitical influences on energy security, publishing 66 articles, and as can be seen from Fig. 7 , Resource Policy shows a sharp increase in the number of articles published after 2022, possibly due to the increased global energy risks resulting from the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which has become a popular topic of choice for the journal. This is followed by Energy Policy (33 articles), Energy Economics (27 articles), Energy Research & Social Science (17 articles), and Energy (16 articles). Among the top 5 journals, journals in the field of energy and resources receive more attention than other fields. In addition, the co-citation network of journals (Fig. 8 ) shows the common citation relationships between publications published in different journals, with the thickness of the connecting line indicating the strength of the citation. Resources Policy and Energy Economics are the journals with the highest strength of connectivity, and articles in these two journals have the highest number of citations, suggesting that the content of articles published in Resources Policy and Energy Economics are highly similar in terms of research direction.

This figure illustrates the annual publication trend for the top 10 journals in terms of the number of articles published. The horizontal axis represents the year while the vertical axis depicts the number of articles published by the journal.

This figure depicts the journal citation network, where nodes represent journals, and connecting lines indicate citation relationships between papers published in the journals.

To further clarify the distribution of core journals in this subject area of geopolitical impact on energy security, the Bradford distribution of core journals was mapped using the Rstudio. Bradford’s Law describes the uneven distribution of scientific articles across journals due to differences in closeness between specialized disciplines (Bradford, 1934 ). Journals can be classified into three categories based on the number of articles published. The ratio of the number of journals in each group is \(1:a:{a}^{2}\) (Yang et al., 2016 ), which indicates that a large number of specialized papers are first concentrated in a few core journals, with some papers appearing in other journals related to the specialty. Bradford’s Law has been widely used to study different subject trends. Based on the information provided in the data in Table 7 , the journals are categorized into three regions, each of which carries approximately the same number of articles. As can be seen in Fig. 9 , the core journals in this subject area are mainly Resources Policy , Energy Policy , Energy Economics , Energy Research & Social Science . Journals in the core zone account for 2.96% of all journals and publish 33.33% of the articles in the field. Journals in the relevant journals account for 14.07% of the total number of journals and publish 33.8% of the articles in the field, while journals in the discrete journals account for 82.96% of the total number of journals and publish 32.87% of the articles in the field as shown in Table 8 . The four journals, Resources Policy , Energy Policy , Energy Economics , and Energy Research & Social Science , are more concerned with geopolitics and energy security. Researchers engaged in this field may therefore consider these journals as a source of knowledge.

This figure illustrates the distribution of core journals within the field of study. The horizontal axis represents the journal category, the vertical axis represents the number of journal publications, and the shaded area represents the range of core journals.

Contribution of core literature

We used VOSviewer to map the literature coupling network of geopolitical impact studies on energy security to explore the most influential academic literature in the field, as shown in Fig. 10 , where the node size indicates the total number of citations to the article and the connecting lines indicate the coupling relationships. Concurrently, the academic literature that has been cited the most is highlighted, and the detailed information of the top 10 most cited articles is listed in Table 9 , including the title of the article, the first author, the country of affiliation, publication year, the total number of citations, the journal of publication, and the DOI of the literature. As illustrated in it, the literature with the greatest number of citations is Lynne Chester’s article Conceptualizing Energy Security and Making Explicit Its Polysemic Nature , published in Energy Policy in 2010. This article has been cited a total of 310 times since its initial publication, and it is widely recognized within the industry as a highly cited document in this subject area. This article presented an early research explanation of the conceptualization of energy security. It addressed the multifaceted connotations of energy security, the market paradigm, and its multidimensional nature from a theoretical perspective that informed subsequent studies (Chester, 2010 ). The second most frequently cited article is Renewable Energy and Geopolitics: A Review by Roman Vakulchuk, published in 2020. This review article presented a comprehensive analysis of the geopolitical literature related to renewable energy. The study revealed that many publications on renewable energy and geopolitics employed limited research methodologies, failed to delineate geopolitical periods, and lacked in-depth discussions. Furthermore, the analysis indicated that most relevant articles focused on oil-producing countries, while ignoring coal-dependent countries (Vakulchuk et al., 2020 ). Moreover, it is notable that almost half of the top 10 cited literature originates from China, which serves to corroborate China’s research production level in this area.

This figure represents the literature coupling network, the nodes represent the literature, the node size represents the number of citations, the node connecting lines represent the coupling relationship of the literature, and the node color represents the time distribution.

Thematic distribution

Thematic keywords.

Keywords can provide information about the core content of the article (Wang et al., 2024b ). The frequency of keyword occurrences over time can reflect research trends in the field of study. We used Rstudio programming techniques to draw keyword heat maps and cumulative keyword heat maps in the research area of geopolitical impact on energy security. As shown in Fig. 11 , which demonstrates the top 20 high-frequency keywords in the study of geopolitical impact on energy security. From the keyword heat map and the cumulative keyword heat map, it can be seen that “Natural gas” and “Oil” are the first to appear in the heat map, and both of them have a significant heat in 2006, and the heat lastes for a long time. It shows that the geopolitical impact on energy security is first and foremost reflected in the impact on natural gas and oil and that geopolitics has a significant long-term impact on hydrocarbons. In addition to “natural gas” and “oil” having significant heat in the keyword heat map, other keywords that appear earlier and have significant heat include “Russia” and “China”. In addition, in terms of sudden heat, “Climate change” receives huge attention in 2016. “Energy policy”, “Energy”, “Uncertainty”, “Natural gas” and “Oil” have a sudden increase in heat in 2021. The following is an in-depth analysis of the featured keywords.

This figure depicts the distribution of keyword frequency and cumulative keyword frequency. The horizontal axis represents the year, the vertical axis represents the keyword category, and the color represents the heat value of the keyword.

Natural gas and oil

The co-occurrence mapping of natural gas and oil linked to other keywords is shown in Fig. 12 . “Natural gas” co-occurs with several keywords such as “energy security”, “consumption”, “market”, “crude oil”, “oil”, “policy”, “risk”, “China”, “Russia”, “EU”, and so on. “Oil” co-occurs with several keywords such as “energy policy”, “renewable energy”, “market”, “natural gas”, “vulnerability”, “return”, “price”, “cooperation”, “consumption”, “China” and “Russia”. Natural gas and oil are important energy components and occupy a prominent place in the global energy landscape. Natural gas is a vital source of electricity generation, and natural gas-fired power plants can provide backup and grid stability for intermittent renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power (Baldick, 2014 ; Mac Kinnon et al., 2018 ), their ability to increase or decrease rapidly complements the variability of renewable energy production. Natural gas is highly efficient, flexible, and low-emission compared to other fossil fuels, and natural gas produces fewer carbon emissions and less pollution when burned (Safari et al., 2019 ). At the same time, natural gas is an important source of energy to support industrial production and social life. Oil is a key feedstock for the petrochemical industry (Keim, 2010 ). It provides raw materials for the production of a wide range of products, including plastics, synthetic rubber, solvents, fertilizers, and chemicals, and is an important driver of global trade and economic activity. The geopolitical impact on energy security is the first thing that prompts global scientists to discuss natural gas and oil, given their wide-ranging and important international status, for geopolitical factors play a crucial role in determining the global distribution of natural gas reserves and oil. Countries with rich hydrocarbon reserves often have important strategic advantages that influence regional political alliances, trade relations (Gu and Wang, 2015 ). And geopolitical tensions could disrupt oil and gas supplies and affect global oil and gas markets. Armed conflict and political instability in natural gas regions increase the risk of gas supply disruptions and hinder the construction of projects such as gas pipelines.

This figure shows the co-occurrence network for the keywords “natural gas” and “oil”, where different nodes represent different keywords and the lines between the keywords represent co-occurrence relationships.

Russia and China

The connection between Russia and China in the keyword co-occurrence diagram is shown in Fig. 13 . Russia has co-occurring relationships with the keywords “energy security”, “gas”, “oil”, “cooperation”, “Ukraine”, “Europe”, “renewable energy”, “China”, “policy”. In the co-occurrence mapping of the keyword China, there are co-occurrence relationships for several keywords such as “economic growth”, “energy security”, “energy transition”, “oil price”, “cooperation”, “return”, “demand”, and “consumption”. Russia has the world’s largest natural gas reserves and is one of the largest producers of crude oil, as well as being the world’s largest producer and exporter of natural gas (Karacan et al., 2021 ). In view of the geographical advantages, a number of European countries have formed close energy cooperation with Russia, and the rich energy reserves have become an important tool for Russia’s strategic negotiations and energy diplomacy (Bilgin, 2009 ). Russia is located in a geopolitical risk zone, with armed conflict with Ukraine in 2022 having a huge impact on Russian and global energy markets (Rokicki et al., 2023 ). Several European countries have restricted Russian energy imports, leading to an energy supply crisis in Europe (Kuzemko et al., 2022 ). China is the world’s largest energy consumer, and the diversification of China’s energy mix has made it more concerned about global energy security conditions (Boute, 2019 ). This is because China’s energy demand is fueled by rapid economic growth and accelerated industrialization. Whereas China is heavily dependent on energy imports, the impact of regional conflicts and political tensions on global energy supplies could also affect China’s energy import trade. China actively engages in energy cooperation with countries in Central Asia (Zhou et al., 2020 ) and Africa (Bradshaw, 2009 ), putting forward the “Belt and Road” initiative, and significant investment in global energy infrastructure was done to increase China’s influence in major energy-producing regions, ensure access to key resources and enhance the country’s energy security (Duan and Duan, 2023 ).

This figure shows the co-occurrence network for the keywords “Russia” and “China”, where different nodes represent different keywords and the lines between the keywords represent co-occurrence relationships.

Climate change

As shown in Fig. 14 , climate change is closely related to the keywords “environment”, “energy security”, “energy transition”, “carbon emissions”, “renewable energy”, and “cooperation”. Climate change has been an important global issue, and its involvement in the discussion of geopolitical influences on energy security is notable. On the one hand, geopolitical factors have led to changes in global energy consumption patterns, and the deterioration of inter-State relations could re-exacerbate dependence on fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas. The “Escalation effects” of geopolitical risks reduce renewable energy consumption and lead to higher carbon emissions (Anser et al., 2021 ). Geopolitical decisions related to the development of energy infrastructure may affect the integration of renewable energy into national or regional energy systems, slowing down clean energy deployment plans and increasing global greenhouse gas emissions. On the other hand, favorable geopolitical policies and international cooperation can drive investment in clean energy technologies and increase opportunities for international R&D cooperation. In conclusion, the implications for climate change under the geopolitical discussion of energy security are complex.

This figure shows the co-occurrence network for the keywords “Climate change”, where different nodes represent different keywords and the lines between the keywords represent co-occurrence relationships.

Energy policy and uncertainty

As shown in Fig. 15 , energy policy is closely related to the keywords “renewable energy”, “price”, “oil”, “climate change”, and “country”. In the keyword co-occurrence mapping of “uncertainty”, the terms “market,” “price,” “return,” and “economic growth” appear more frequently. Energy policy and uncertainty are key themes influencing the discussion of geopolitical implications for energy security. Government intervention is an important response to energy security issues, and governments around the world develop energy policies as a strategic framework to address the complex interplay of domestic and international factors that seek to enhance energy security and reduce uncertainty in the energy sector (Youngs, 2009 ). The formulation of energy policy is influenced by factors such as national energy structure and energy consumption (Li et al. 2024 ). Uncertainty about geopolitical risks also affects national energy policies, and it is important for national policymakers to combine measures to address geopolitical risks with the maintenance of national energy security and to reduce the vulnerability of global energy prices, energy trade, and energy supply to geopolitical risks. Uncertainty in the geopolitical landscape poses a challenge to energy policymakers. Sudden geopolitical events, changes in international relations, or changes in the dynamics of energy markets can threaten energy security, and the development of effective energy policies has become an important tool for addressing geopolitical threats to energy security.

This figure shows the co-occurrence network for the keywords “Energy policy” and “Uncertainty”, where different nodes represent different keywords and the lines between the keywords represent co-occurrence relationships.

Thematic evolution path

This section mapped the timeline of keyword co-occurrence from the perspective of the temporal evolution of keyword co-occurrence. As shown in Fig. 16 , the transition from cold to warm indicates the time from far to near, and the average occurrence time of keywords can be identified by the time color band in the graph. The research phases can be categorized into three distinct phases according to the average year in which the keywords appeared. The average year of emergence of the first stage is 2018–2020, with a focus on the energy sector, which means objects that geopolitics may threaten. The main objects of energy security risks that can be extracted from typical words are “natural gas”, “oil”, “power”, “hydropower”, “nuclear power”, “fossil fuels”, “energy trade”, and they form the core of the global energy infrastructure. The identified energy security risks are multifaceted, encompassing not only traditional concerns related to fossil fuels but also reaching into the complex dynamics of the “energy trade”. The interconnected nature of energy resources and their global distribution necessitate a thorough review of trade relationships to assess potential vulnerabilities in energy supply chains. In the geopolitical area, certain countries play a pivotal role, directly affecting or being affected by developments in the energy sector, “China”, “Russia”, “EU”, “United States”, “India”, “Germany”, “Japan”, “Turkey”, “Central Asia”, “Middle East”, “Ukraine”, “Pakistan”, “Poland” are in the spotlight at this stage. Each of these countries faces a unique set of challenges and opportunities in terms of energy security. As mentioned previously, China is a rapidly growing consumer and producer of energy, influencing the global energy market (Odgaard and Delman, 2014 ). Russia is rich in energy reserves and plays an important role in regional and global energy dynamics. The EU, as a collective entity, plays a central role in the development of energy policies and in promoting cooperation among its member States. India’s economy is booming and it seeks to ensure a stable and continuous supply of energy to support its growth trajectory (Kumar and Majid, 2020 ). Germany, Japan, and Turkey represent industrialized countries with special energy needs and dependencies (Cherp et al., 2017 ; Kilickaplan et al., 2017 ). A comprehensive look at countries and regions provides a comprehensive understanding of the interconnected network of energy security issues, including supplier and consumer countries in the global energy landscape. As the research continues, it aims to unravel the intricate relationships, dependencies, and potential hotspots that will shape the future of global energy security.

This figure depicts the temporal evolution of keyword co-occurrences, with colors ranging from cool to warm to indicate time from far to near.

The average year of occurrence of the second stage is 2020–2022, which is a light warm color on the clustered time plot. During this period, the keywords “geopolitical risk”, “renewable energy”, “energy transition”, “crude oil”, “price”, “crude oil price”, “uncertainty”, “return”, “demand”, “policy uncertainty”, “growth”, “oil price shocks”, “volatility”, “price volatility”, “markets”, “gold price”, “stock market” are found to be more frequent. Popular keywords provide a comprehensive overview of key themes and concerns in the energy industry and related markets. The emergence of the term “geopolitical risk” as a focal point indicates an acute awareness of the impact of geopolitical events on energy markets and the wider global economy, as well as a heightened sensitivity to geopolitical tensions, conflicts, and geopolitical strategies that could disrupt energy supplies and markets. “Renewable energy” and “energy transition” continue to feature prominently, highlighting the growing emphasis on sustainable and clean energy. This period has been characterized by growing interest and discussion around the global shift to renewable energy, reflecting a concerted effort to address environmental concerns and reduce dependence on traditional fossil fuels. The constant references to “crude oil”, “price” and “crude oil price”, together with terms such as “oil price shocks”, “volatility”, “price fluctuations”, “market”, “gold price” and “stock market”, highlight the energy industry’s continued interest in and scrutiny of the intricate relationship between geopolitical risks and global energy markets. Conflicts, political tensions, or disruptions in the oil supply chain in the world’s major oil-producing regions could lead to unpredictable and dramatic fluctuations in oil prices. Such sharp fluctuations create uncertainty for both producers and consumers, affecting investment decisions and market dynamics (Mei et al., 2020 ). In conclusion, this stage of research focuses on the fluctuations of geopolitics in the energy economy market and the financial market, and it is gradually recognized that geopolitics produces dramatic fluctuations in the energy economy market, while the sensitivity of the crude oil price, oil price to geopolitical risks promotes the exploration of measures to resist the geopolitical risks.

The average year of occurrence of the third stage is 2022–2023, which appears in red on the clustered time plot. “GDP”, “financial development”, “natural resources”, “green finance”, “determinants”, “empirical analysis”, “utility testing”, “regression analysis”, “impulse response analysis”, “time series”, “wavelet correlation”, and other keywords frequently appear. It is worth noting that the interconnection between the financial system and the energy market has received extensive attention from researchers and scholars in the context of the geopolitical impact on energy security, as indicated by keywords such as “GDP”, “financial development” and “green finance”. The keywords “determinants,” “empirical analysis,” “utility testing,” “regression analysis,” “impulse response analysis,” “time series,” and “wavelet correlation” collectively indicate a methodological shift toward rigorous quantitative analysis at this stage. Researchers seem to have employed advanced statistical tools and econometric techniques to explore the determinants and effects of various factors on energy-related phenomena. The methodological shift suggests that the field is moving toward evidence-based policymaking and a desire to build a solid empirical foundation. The diversity of keywords in this phase implies a multidimensional exploration, integrating economic, financial, and environmental factors, in addition to multiple keywords on research methodology suggesting that research is moving towards more advanced analytical tools and empirical frameworks.

Thematic clustering

Keyword clustering analysis is able to explain the main hotspots in the research field, which was mapped by VOSviewer and Scimago. As shown in Fig. 17 , hotspot clusters are distributed in a two-dimensional rectangular coordinate system, and different colors indicate different clusters. The distribution of colors and the legend in Fig. 17 show that the main hotspots in this research area are distributed in six clusters. We obtained cluster labels from the keywords contained in the clusters and discussed with experts to determine the keyword labels that best summarize the nature of the clusters and labeled them in Fig. 17 . The size of a clustering cluster is determined by the number of keywords contained in the cluster. The cluster with the largest number of keywords is the green cluster, which focuses on keywords such as “fossil energy”, “clean energy”, “renewable energy” and “energy transition”, it is therefore reasonable to name the green cluster “energy transition”. And then the purple cluster, which is identified through keyword analysis as being closely related to the natural environment, and is therefore identified as being labeled “natural environment”. Similarly, based on the keyword categories, the blue cluster is labeled “energy policy”, and the red and pink clusters, which cover a sparse number of keywords and tend to be similar in nature to the orange clusters, are combined and labeled “energy market”. It is worth noting that the horizontal and vertical axes in the 2D cartesian coordinate system have no obvious data meaning, but merely indicate the relative positions of the keywords and their clusters in the 2D space. Subsequently, our study further explored for the identified keyword clusters.

This figure illustrates keyword clustering, wherein nodes represent keywords and different nodes are colored to indicate distinct clusters. The horizontal and vertical axes represent the relative positions of the nodes.

Green cluster: energy transition

Energy transition refers to a change in the way energy is utilized, a reduction in the share of fossil energy in the energy mix, and a transition from traditional fossil energy consumption to clean energy consumption (Rasoulinezhad et al., 2020 ). Geopolitical risk works both ways for energy transition, with major changes in international energy markets under the Russia–Ukraine conflict. European countries, opposed to Russia’s military conflict over Ukraine and determined to reduce energy trade with Russia, have resumed coal- and oil-fired power generation amid gas shortages (Wang et al., 2023 ), higher geopolitical risk also increases the cost of renewable energy deployment (Shirazi et al., 2023 ), slows down the energy transition and inhibits the transition to renewable energy. Meanwhile, “high-risk” countries at geopolitical centers may face obstacles in seeking foreign investment, inhibiting the development of renewable energy infrastructure (Fischhendler et al., 2021 ). On an optimistic note, studies have demonstrated the positive contribution of geopolitical risk to the development of renewable energy, with high geopolitical risk spurring countries to consume more renewable energy (Sweidan, 2021 ), which could be an important tool to facilitate the clean energy transition (Liu et al., 2023 ). The complex relationship between geopolitical risk and renewable energy has been subjected to multiple argumentative studies, and thus energy transition is one of the important research directions for researchers and scholars in various countries in the context of geopolitical risk affecting energy security.

Purple cluster: natural environment

The three themes of geopolitical risk, energy security, and climate change have become popular topics for researchers and scholars around the world. Geopolitical tensions not only bring political and economic uncertainty but also harm the natural environment (Acheampong et al., 2023 ). The direct impact of geopolitical risk on the environment is manifested in the control of and access to valuable natural resources, such as oil, gas, minerals, and water, competition for which can lead to overexploitation, environmental degradation, and ecosystem destruction (Li et al., 2023 ). International conflicts and armed struggles also have a greater impact on the surrounding environment, and conflicts can lead to increased air pollution and destruction of green facilities in the region, and the production and manufacture of military equipment can increase atmospheric carbon dioxide (Ullah et al., 2020 ). Furthermore, geopolitical risks act on the natural environment by affecting the consumption structure of the energy sector. The previous analysis showed that the process of energy transition was negatively affected by geopolitical risks, the decline in the consumption of renewable energy sources, and the reduction of clean energy infrastructure were not conducive to the suppression of carbon emissions. In addition, unfriendly relations between countries can hamper global cooperation in addressing climate change and environmental issues, and prolonged hostilities can impede the conclusion of bilateral or multivariate agreements, which in turn affects sustainable development (Zhao et al., 2021 ).

Red, pink, and orange cluster: energy market

Geopolitical risks have historically played an important role in influencing global energy prices. One study summarized three channels through which geopolitical risk affected energy prices: the threat of conflict acting on energy conversion resulting in lower oil prices, the impact on energy prices of rising negative investor sentiment due to the threat of conflict, and the role of geopolitical uncertainty on energy supply and demand (Li et al., 2020 ). Additionally, geopolitical tensions and conflicts in major oil- and gas-producing regions could disrupt the production and transportation of energy resources. For example, conflicts in the Middle East involving major oil-producing countries such as Iraq or Saudi Arabia had the potential to result in supply disruptions and subsequent increases in oil prices (Cunado et al., 2019 ; Su et al., 2019 ). Then, geopolitical events have affected national foreign trade policies, leading to the imposition of sanctions or embargoes on certain countries, restricting their ability to export or import energy resources, and reducing the global supply of oil and natural gas, resulting in higher prices. Thus, the complex relationship between geopolitical risks and global energy markets has led to a strong interest in this direction among researchers and scholars in various countries.

Blue cluster: energy policy

As Governments grapple with the dual challenge of meeting growing energy demand and addressing climate issues, the energy policy landscape has changed significantly and is often influenced by geopolitical risks. Energy policy is an integrated strategic framework for managing the production, consumption, and sustainability of a country’s energy resources and plays an important role in economic development, national security, and environmental stability (Chen, 2011 ). The multidimensional objectives of energy policy underscore its centrality to national interests: ensuring reliable and affordable energy supplies, promoting economic growth, reducing environmental impacts, and enhancing energy security (Doukas et al., 2008 ). Energy policy is undergoing transformative changes in the contemporary geopolitical landscape, driven by an intricate interplay of technological advances, environmental imperatives, and geopolitical risks (Wang et al., 2024 ). The geopolitical landscape brings a layer of complexity to energy policy, as countries must navigate an intricate web of alliances, rivalries, and resource dependencies. Geopolitical risk manifests itself in the energy sector in a variety of ways, including disruptions in the global energy supply chain due to conflicts in major oil-producing regions, and trade disputes affecting energy trade (Golan et al., 2020 ; Zhang et al., 2023b ). In the face of these risks, there is a need for a nuanced energy policy that requires a comprehensive understanding of how global geopolitical dynamics can affect energy markets and, in turn, a country’s energy security. Therefore, as the world faces continued geopolitical uncertainty, energy policy will continue to evolve, reflecting the need to balance energy security, economic development, and environmental sustainability in an increasingly interconnected and dynamic global environment.

Conclusions, implications, and limitations

Geopolitics has a profound impact on the energy sector, and the threat in particular is global energy security. Using a systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis, we analyzed more than 400 articles published in the Web of Science core collection qualitatively and quantitatively, and identified the historical development trend, the distribution of research power, the overview of the international collaboration, the research hotspots, and the evolution path of the research. The main findings of this study are as follows:

Researches in geopolitics and energy security is under development, the subject area has moved away from economic factors in the distribution of scientific research to a greater reliance on the global distribution of energy sources. In other words, the distribution of literature output in this subject area no longer follows the trend of distribution between developed and developing countries but is distributed in energy-rich countries or regions, such as oil and gas resources.

The macro-, meso- and micro-networks of scientific collaboration show a more connected group of collaborators, with China as an important research force in the field, and strong links with a number of countries in the Americas, the Middle East and Europe. A total of 27 collaborative groups are generated globally in the institutional collaborative network (ICN). Among them, Qingdao University (China), which has formed the largest collaborative network with a number of institutions at home and abroad, represents the collaborative institutions of the center. Chi-Wei Su is identified as an important co-occurring author in the author collaboration network (ACN), with a large number of collaboration clusters center on him. The K–S test verifies the validity of Lotka’s Law for the distribution of authors in this field and the application of Bradford’s Law identifies the core journals in this research area as Resource Policy , Energy Policy , Energy Economics , Energy Research & Social Science .

The keyword heat map of the thematic analysis shows that the first keywords to be hit in this area are natural gas and oil, and that there is a long-term impact on hydrocarbons, and keywords such as climate change, energy policy, and uncertainty have received sudden attention additionally. The evolutionary path of the thematic analysis shows the three main stages of the development of this research topic, while the keyword clustering shows that the research on this topic focuses on the areas of energy transition, energy markets, energy policy, and the natural environment.

Our research prompts global policymakers to pay further attention to the uncertain risks posed by geopolitics to energy security, and endeavor to promote scientific research collaboration and international goodwill among countries to solve practical problems together. Concurrently, it is imperative to rectify the principal research direction, accelerating the transformation of the country’s energy structure, maintaining the stability of the energy market, and formulating rational energy policies, while paying attention to the impact on the natural environment. In addition, our research has certain advantages in terms of identifying overall trends and future directions of a research topic, however, there are still some limitations in data collection, data processing and tool application. First, our data were obtained from the Web of Science core collection, and by manually reading the titles, abstracts, and bodies, we screened the academic papers that best fit the topic for inclusion in the subsequent analysis, but we still failed to immune to omissions. The homogeneity of the database selection may result in the omission of gray literature in the field, as we initially focused on high-quality literature published in high-quality journals. Second, in addition to academic papers, which can represent a country’s research priorities, other categories of academic activities such as research projects, conference papers, and books can also reflect research trends to a certain extent, however, our paper data excluded this information, and it is possible for future research to collect and process the results of the different academic categories to enrich the field’s research. Finally, the systematic limitations of the bibliometric approach may have produced errors in the results of the statistical and bibliometric analysis of the articles, and future research could further improve the research methodology to reduce systematic errors.

Data availability

The datasets publicly available should be through https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/DYCRUR .

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the “Youth Innovation Team Project” of the Higher Education Institutions under the Shandong Provincial Department of Education (No. 2023RW015), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71874203).

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Wang, Q., Ren, F. & Li, R. Geopolitics and energy security: a comprehensive exploration of evolution, collaborations, and future directions. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11 , 1071 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03507-2

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Connected to the future, life is more meaningful: the effect of future self-continuity on the presence of meaning

• Published: 27 August 2024

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• Lulu Xue 1 ,
• Hang Fan 2 ,
• Yun Yan 1 ,
• Liping Zhang 1 ,
• Yanna Jiang 1 &
• Lipeng Chen   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0417-4935 1  

Although studies have confirmed that future self-continuity impacts the presence of meaning, evidence of cross-cultural consistency remains scarce, and the underlying mechanisms between the two are unclear. To fill this research gap, we conducted two studies using a sample of Chinese college students ( N  = 631). Study 1 verified the positive predictive effect of future self-continuity on the presence of meaning in the context of Eastern culture through two sub-experiments ( n  = 325), thereby confirming its cross-cultural consistency. Study 2, a three-wave longitudinal study, revealed the mediating mechanisms through which future self-continuity affects the presence of meaning ( n  = 306). The results suggest that future self-continuity at Time 1 can directly predict the presence of meaning at Time 3 and indirectly predict the presence of meaning at Time 3 through self-concept clarity at Time 2. Thus, self-concept clarity partially mediates the relationship between future self-continuity and the presence of meaning. These findings enrich cross-cultural research on the presence of meaning and provide new ideas and methods for enhancing the presence of meaning in individual lives.

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In the supplementary material, we report results controlling for word count and positive effect.

In the supplementary material, we test our hypothesis without control variables.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the young students who participated in this project.

This work was supported by the Fund for Building World-Class Universities (Disciplines) of the Renmin University of China Project.

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Department of Psychology, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China

Lulu Xue, Yun Yan, Liping Zhang, Yanna Jiang & Lipeng Chen

Research Center, Party School of China Railway Engineering Corporation, Beijing, China

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Lulu Xue: Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Visualization, Writing– original draft, Writing– review & editing. Hang Fan: Validation, Writing– review & editing. Yun Yan: Validation, Writing– review & editing. Liping Zhang: Validation, Writing– review & editing. Yanna Jiang: Validation, Writing– review & editing. Lipeng Chen: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Supervision, Writing– review & editing.

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Correspondence to Lipeng Chen .

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Xue, L., Fan, H., Yan, Y. et al. Connected to the future, life is more meaningful: the effect of future self-continuity on the presence of meaning. Curr Psychol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-06521-4

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Published : 27 August 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-06521-4

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New Classical Algorithm Enhances Understanding of Quantum Computing’s Future

In an exciting development for quantum computing, researchers from the University of Chicago’s Department of Computer Science , Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering , and Argonne National Laboratory have introduced a groundbreaking classical algorithm that simulates Gaussian boson sampling (GBS) experiments. This achievement not only helps clarify the complexities of current quantum systems but also represents a significant step forward in our understanding of how quantum and classical computing can work together. The research just appeared in the prominent Nature Physics Journal this past June.

The Challenge of Gaussian Boson Sampling

Gaussian boson sampling has gained attention as a promising approach to demonstrating quantum advantage, meaning the ability of quantum computers to perform tasks that classical computers cannot do efficiently. The journey leading up to this breakthrough has been marked by a series of innovative experiments that tested the limits of quantum systems. Previous studies indicated that GBS is challenging for classical computers to simulate under ideal conditions. However, Assistant Professor and author Bill Fefferman pointed out that the noise and photon loss present in actual experiments create additional challenges that require careful analysis.

Notably, experiments ( such as these ) conducted by teams at major research centers from the University of Science and Technology of China and Xanadu, a Canadian quantum company, have shown that while quantum devices can produce outputs consistent with GBS predictions, the presence of noise often obscures these results, leading to questions about the claimed quantum advantage. These experiments served as a foundation for the current research, driving scientists to refine their approaches to GBS and better understand its limitations.

Understanding Noise in Quantum Experiments

“While the theoretical groundwork has established that quantum systems can outperform classical ones, the noise present in actual experiments introduces complexities that require rigorous analysis,” explained Fefferman. “​​Understanding how noise affects performance is crucial as we strive for practical applications of quantum computing.”

This new algorithm addresses these complexities by leveraging the high photon loss rates common in current GBS experiments to provide a more efficient and accurate simulation. The researchers employed a classical tensor-network approach that capitalizes on the behavior of quantum states in these noisy environments, making the simulation more efficient and manageable with available computational resources.

Breakthrough Results

Remarkably, the researchers found that their classical simulation performed better than some state-of-the-art GBS experiments in various benchmarks.

“What we’re seeing is not a failure of quantum computing, but rather an opportunity to refine our understanding of its capabilities,” Fefferman emphasized. “It allows us to improve our algorithms and push the boundaries of what we can achieve.”

The algorithm outperformed experiments by accurately capturing the ideal distribution of GBS output states, raising questions about the claimed quantum advantage of existing experiments. This insight opens doors for improving the design of future quantum experiments, suggesting that enhancing photon transmission rates and increasing the number of squeezed states could significantly boost their effectiveness.

Implications for Future Technologies

The implications of these findings extend beyond the realm of quantum computing. As quantum technologies continue to evolve, they hold the potential to revolutionize fields such as cryptography, materials science, and drug discovery. For instance, quantum computing could lead to breakthroughs in secure communication methods, enabling more robust protection of sensitive data. In materials science, quantum simulations can help discover new materials with unique properties, paving the way for advancements in technology, energy storage, and manufacturing. By advancing our understanding of these systems, researchers are laying the groundwork for practical applications that could change the way we approach complex problems in various sectors.

The pursuit of quantum advantage is not just an academic endeavor; it has tangible implications for industries that rely on complex computations. As quantum technologies mature, they have the potential to play a crucial role in optimizing supply chains, enhancing artificial intelligence algorithms, and improving climate modeling. The collaboration between quantum and classical computing is crucial for realizing these advancements, as it allows researchers to harness the strengths of both paradigms.

A Cumulative Research Effort

Fefferman worked closely with Professor Liang Jiang from the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and former postdoc Changhun Oh , currently an Assistant Professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, on previous work that culminated in this piece of research.

In 2021, they examined the computational power of noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices through lossy boson sampling . The paper revealed that photon loss affects classical simulation costs depending on the number of input photons, which could lead to exponential savings in classical time complexity. Following this, their second paper focused on the impact of noise in experiments designed to demonstrate quantum supremacy, showing that even with significant noise, quantum devices can still produce results that are difficult for classical computers to match. In their third article, they explored Gaussian boson sampling (GBS) by proposing a new architecture that improves programmability and resilience against photon loss, making large scale experiments more feasible. They then introduced a classical algorithm in their fourth paper that generates outcomes closely aligned with ideal boson sampling, enhancing benchmarking techniques and emphasizing the importance of carefully selecting experiment sizes to preserve the quantum signal amidst noise.Finally, in their latest study, they developed quantum-inspired classical algorithms to tackle graph-theoretical problems like finding the densest k-subgraph and the maximum weight clique and a quantum chemistry problem called the molecular vibronic spectra generation . Their findings suggested that the claimed advantages of quantum methods may not be as significant as previously thought, with their classical sampler performing similarly to the Gaussian boson sampler.

Looking Ahead

The development of the classical simulation algorithm not only enhances our understanding of Gaussian boson sampling experiments but also highlights the importance of continued research in both quantum and classical computing. The ability to simulate GBS more effectively serves as a bridge toward more powerful quantum technologies, ultimately helping us navigate the complexities of modern challenges. As we explore these insights, we move closer to realizing the full potential of quantum technologies, which could lead to innovative solutions that benefit society as a whole. Each step forward in this journey brings us closer to a future where quantum computing plays a vital role in addressing some of the world’s most pressing challenges. With ongoing research and collaboration, the future of quantum computing looks promising, unlocking new realms of possibility for science and society.

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