TY - JOUR
T1 - Bullshit in the Sustainability and Transitions Literature: a Provocation
AU - Kirchherr, Julian
N1 - Funding Information:
The author thanks Jeroen van den Bergh for valuable comments on a previous version of this work.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).
PY - 2023/3
Y1 - 2023/3
N2 - Research on sustainability and transitions is burgeoning. Some of this research is helping to solve humankind’s most pressing problems. However, as this provocation argues, up to 50% of the articles that are now being published in many interdisciplinary sustainability and transitions journals may be categorized as “scholarly bullshit.” These are articles that typically engage with the latest sustainability and transitions buzzword (e.g., circular economy), while contributing little to none to the scholarly body of knowledge on the topic. A typology of “scholarly bullshit” is proposed which includes the following archetypes: boring question scholarship, literature review of literature reviews, recycled research, master thesis madness, and activist rants. Since “scholarly bullshit” articles engage with the latest academic buzzwords, they also tend to accumulate significant citations and are thus welcomed by many journal editors. Citations matter most in the metric-driven logic of the academic system, and this type of scholarship, sadly, is thus unlikely to decrease in the coming years.
AB - Research on sustainability and transitions is burgeoning. Some of this research is helping to solve humankind’s most pressing problems. However, as this provocation argues, up to 50% of the articles that are now being published in many interdisciplinary sustainability and transitions journals may be categorized as “scholarly bullshit.” These are articles that typically engage with the latest sustainability and transitions buzzword (e.g., circular economy), while contributing little to none to the scholarly body of knowledge on the topic. A typology of “scholarly bullshit” is proposed which includes the following archetypes: boring question scholarship, literature review of literature reviews, recycled research, master thesis madness, and activist rants. Since “scholarly bullshit” articles engage with the latest academic buzzwords, they also tend to accumulate significant citations and are thus welcomed by many journal editors. Citations matter most in the metric-driven logic of the academic system, and this type of scholarship, sadly, is thus unlikely to decrease in the coming years.
KW - Circular economy
KW - Scholarly bullshit
KW - Sustainability
KW - Sustainability transitions
KW - Sustainable development
KW - Theory of bullshit
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85171300560&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s43615-022-00175-9
DO - 10.1007/s43615-022-00175-9
M3 - Article
SN - 2730-597X
VL - 3
SP - 167
EP - 172
JO - Circular Economy and Sustainability
JF - Circular Economy and Sustainability
IS - 1
ER -