Bullshit in the Sustainability and Transitions Literature: a Provocation

Julian Kirchherr ()
Additional contact information
Julian Kirchherr: Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University

Circular Economy and Sustainability, 2023, vol. 3, issue 1, 167-172

Abstract: Abstract 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.

Keywords: Circular economy; Sustainability; Sustainable development; Sustainability transitions; Theory of bullshit; Scholarly bullshit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s43615-022-00175-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:circec:v:3:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1007_s43615-022-00175-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer.com/journal/43615

DOI: 10.1007/s43615-022-00175-9

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Circular Economy and Sustainability from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().