About

We are building a first-in-kind platform to aggregate information on all ongoing climate research across the world and make it accessible in a meaningful way. The platform will enable existing and aspiring climate researchers to learn about work that is already underway and network with academics across the globe who are presently working in their area of interest. It will also enable policy makers, businesses, and funders of climate research to collaborate with researchers, to understand which geographical areas and topics are receiving high attention and which ones need more. This will increase the impact of research and improve decision-making.

A need for collating climate change research

There is a high volume of valuable climate research happening around the world, but the time lag between when that research is initiated and ultimately published (generally several years) means that many opportunities for the timely application of that research, and cross collaboration between those undertaking it, are being missed. Further, at present, there also remain chances of duplication simply because there is no way to know if at any point in time other researchers are working on similar topics. Given the increasing urgency of the climate crisis, consolidating all ongoing climate research into a single, easily accessible database will have profound impacts on our collective effort to find timely and impactful solutions to this challenge. The Global Climate Research Portal will be a one stop shop for researchers, policy makers, funding agencies and businesses to discover what climate research is being done where and by whom.

Multiple beneficiaries

This portal will aim to offer the following benefits to various target audiences:

A. Existing and aspiring climate researchers: access to information on ongoing research on climate change across the world; opportunities to network and collaborate with fellow researchers across the globe

B. Universities: metadata on the scope, scale, and focus of ongoing climate research within the university; comparative data from across other universities; opportunities to create networking events for their climate researchers; platform to advertise research positions related to climate change

C. Institutions that fund climate research: metadata on focus and direction of ongoing climate research; geographies and topics that may be getting disproportionate focus; identification of gaps; platform to advertise funding opportunities

D. Governments: Opportunities to collaborate with researchers in real time and inform them about specific policy needs that the research could assimilate; pick up ideas and potential solutions from ongoing research for pressing issues without having to wait for the research to be published

E. Businesses: Collaborate with academia on potential emerging areas of technological innovation for climate mitigation and adaptation in real time, helping each other come up with innovative and viable climate solutions

Operationalizing the portal

The initial scope of the platform is simple — to aggregate information on climate research conducted in academic institutions within a web-portal that has sophisticated filtered search capabilities. The information will include, inter-alia, the name and contact of researchers, institutional affiliation, title of research project, geographies covered, countries/ cities of case study (if applicable), broad category of research, source and type of project funding, research timeline and keywords related to the research project, etc.

To start with, the information is being aggregated for PhD students at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, MIT and Yale for developing the pilot version of the portal. After the launch of the pilot version, it will be opened up to Universities globally, as also to include non-PhD research projects and other functionalities in subsequent phases. In parallel, potential funding sources for the project are being explored.

The team

This not-for-profit initiative is a collaborative effort of a team of PhD students at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and Yale, all of who are conducting research on different aspects of climate change.