Citation analysis to reconstruct the dynamics of Antarctic ozone hole research and formulation of the Montreal Protocol

The ozone layer acts like a shield in safeguarding the Earth by preventing the harmful ultraviolet radiations from entering into the atmosphere. Reported damage to the ozone layer in 1985 was a significant milestone in Antarctic science research. The research work played a significant role in generating international socio-political debate on this great environmental crisis. This article aims to reconstruct the intellectual developments in the field and identify important scientific events which contributed to the formulation of the world’s most successful multilateral treaty, the Montreal Protocol. The dynamics of the research field was mapped using a newly developed indicator – weighted direct citations (WDC). The WDC value indicates intellectual closeness between two citations in terms of co-citations and shared references. Direct citations were weighted with shared references and co-citations to derive WDC values. An attempt was made to decompose the citation network of articles to identify significant activity layers. The work of J. C. Farman et al. (1985) and S. Solomon (1986), which are the top two most cited significant papers in the subject accounts for top WDC values jointly.