Research Series Review for Transdisciplinarity Assessment—Validation with Sustainable Consumption and Production Research

Abstract

In light of the escalating challenges for the sustainability of our societies, the need for improving the research of sustainable consumption and production (SCP) aiming to make real changes on the societies towards sustainability is evident. Transdisciplinary (TD) research is a promising way to enhance SCP research; however, insights to operationalize the concept of TD research are needed for both funders and researchers. Therefore, this article proposes an innovative way to capture and analyse a research series for transdisciplinarity assessment in qualitative and quantitative terms. This new way is termed research series review (RSR). This article adopted literature analysis and partly reflexive retrospective reasoning. In particular, citation content analysis was carried out in relation to two research series selected as the cases. The results show that RSR has advantages such as clearer traceability with cause-and-effect relationships. Furthermore, a successful SCP research series is hypothesised to form an iterative process between practical and theoretical fields as well as finding opportunities and proposing solutions.