Project: Society-wide Scenarios for Effective Climate Change Mitigation (IE-SSECCM) 

Deliverable D1: Bibliographic database (base version)

The SSECCM-IE project is funded under the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Research Programme 2014-2020, grant reference 2018-CCRP-DS.14. The EPA Research Programme is a Government of Ireland initiative funded by the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment.

In the over-arching context of Ireland's Declaration of a Climate and Biodiversity Emergency, the objective of the IE-SSECCM project  is to present a comparative analysis of international studies of sub-global level, economy-wide, long-term deep decarbonisation scenarios, identifying strengths and weaknesses of approaches and relevance in Irish context. This will support scoping of a possible future full-scale decarbonisation pathways scenarios study for Ireland.

The first formal deliverable from the project is a base version of a bibliographic database identifying relevant national and international literature. This has been publicly released via the free and open Zotero biobliographic reference management platform. This short blog post summarises the process adopted to populate the database and then provides brief user instructions for accessing and interacting with it.

Database item collection

• This database contains a wide-ranging bibliography of 1863 items, initially collected using a “snowball” approach into this base version. This is the basis for further “funnel” sorting and annotation into a forthcoming augmented version that will support the final project report.
• In this base release, the database items are sorted into three main folders. 
  • 1: International literature on climate change mitigation scenarios;
  • 2: Current Irish and EU context for emissions and mitigation;
  • 3: Literature giving context for critical analysis of the literature.
• Each of these main folders is divided into an initial sort of subject sub-collections.
• Each collected item has citation and source information with additional tags to enable further cross-referencing. 

User Guide

The Zotero group name and hyperlink for this base version of the bibliographic database is sseccm-ie-d1. 

On-line database usage

• Once accessed, the Zotero webpage for the database shows it to be a public group with open membership that is free for anyone to view and use as a cross-referenced source for subject-specific citations.
• By registering/creating an account with Zotero, anyone can join this public group; though the database items can also be viewed anonymously (without creating an account).
• This webpage initially shows some Recently Added Items. Clicking the Group Library link takes the user to the full database collection of items, presented in folders. 
• In this view:
  • On the left are library collection folders and sub-collections (opened by clicking each) and Tags (or keywords) assigned to the items. 
  • On the right are the Items relevant to the chosen collection and tag (or multiple tags).
• Tags have been assigned to items to cross-reference items across the database collections. 
  • As there are many tag names, the tag list can be searched in the tag search box. 
  • Clicking “More” under the list of tags shown will show the complete list of tags.
  • Clicking on one or more tags will highlight them and move them to the top of the tag list. Items in the chosen collection or sub-collection that have all of the chosen tags are then shown. 
  • Clicking a highlighted tag will deselect it.

Further Information

For further information or queries in relation to the content of this database, please contact the SSECCM-IE project principle investigator, Barry McMullin: barry.mcmullin@dcu.ie

DISCLAIMER

Although every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the material contained in this database, complete accuracy cannot be guaranteed. Neither the Environmental Protection Agency nor the authors accept any responsibility whatsoever for loss or damage occasioned or claimed to have been occasioned, in part or in full, as a consequence of any person acting or refraining from acting, as a result of a matter contained in this database.