Research on the benefits of nature to people: How much overlap is there in citations and terms for ‘nature’ across disciplines?

Research on the diverse benefits of nature to people is characterised by a broad range of disciplines involved, encompassing a variety of approaches, methods and terminologies. While a diversity of approaches is valuable, it can lead to difficulties in integrating and sharing findings and could form a barrier to effective knowledge exchange, hindering the development and applications of research outputs. As a starting point for this scoping review, we chose four broad research areas (medicine, psychology, education and environment), selected to represent disparate approaches to research on the benefits of nature to people, within and across which to explore overlap in citations and terms used to describe nature. We conducted expert consultation and a snowball-based approach to source publications, resulting in a sample of 210 papers, spanning multiple disciplines within each of our four research areas. For each paper, we recorded the discipline of the journal in which it was published (publishing discipline), the discipline of its first author (first-author discipline), the number of times journals of each discipline were cited in its bibliography (cited discipline) and the term(s) used in the paper’s title or abstract to describe the aspect of nature being explored (nature term). Cited disciplines were significantly different between publishing and first-author disciplines, with papers from psychology, education and public health citing distinct communities of papers. However, disciplines generally cited a wide range of other disciplines, with articles in medical journals being particularly broadly cited. Nature terms were significantly different between publishing and first-author disciplines, with some degree of consistency within disciplines (e.g., education papers consistently used a narrow range of nature terms, such as ‘outdoor learning’). However, there was a notably high range of nature terms used within psychology and public health papers, indicating that research from these disciplines may be particularly prone to being overlooked by search strings. The wide range of disciplines cited is encouraging, since this indicates that diverse research areas are generally aware of each other’s work. However, to avoid unnecessary expansion of nature terms and support searchability, we propose four key terms for nature: (‘outdoor learning’ OR ‘outdoor education’), (‘nature’ OR ‘natural’), (‘green space’ OR ‘greenspace’) and (‘biodiversity’ or ‘trees’), which could be used across disciplines. We particularly propose that at least one of these be included in every paper, and all four should be included in review search strings. This is likely to result in better understanding of the valuable, disparate contributions made by different disciplines to this expanding and important topic.

关于自然对人类多元益处的研究，其显著特点为涉及学科范畴广泛，涵盖多元的研究路径、方法与术语体系。尽管研究路径的多元化具备积极价值，但也可能为研究成果的整合与共享带来阻碍，进而制约知识的高效交流，妨碍研究产出的发展与应用。作为本次范围综述（scoping review）的起始工作，我们选取了四大核心研究领域：医学、心理学、教育学与环境科学，这些领域分别代表了自然对人类益处研究的不同研究范式，借此探索各领域内部及跨领域间的引文与描述自然的术语的重合之处。我们通过专家咨询与滚雪球抽样法（snowball-based approach）筛选文献，最终得到涵盖四大研究领域内多学科的210篇论文样本。针对每篇论文，我们记录了其刊载期刊所属学科（出版学科）、第一作者所属学科（第一作者学科）、参考文献中各学科期刊被引用的次数（被引学科），以及论文标题或摘要中用于描述所研究自然维度的术语（自然术语）。研究结果显示，出版学科与第一作者学科的被引学科分布存在显著差异，心理学、教育学与公共卫生领域的论文所引用的文献群落各具特色。不过总体而言，各学科普遍会引用大量其他学科的文献，其中医学期刊刊载的论文引用范围尤为广泛。不同出版学科与第一作者学科所使用的自然术语也存在显著差异，部分学科内部的术语使用具备一定一致性：例如教育学领域的论文普遍使用窄范围的自然术语，如"户外学习"。但心理学与公共卫生领域的论文所使用的自然术语范围显著更广，这表明这些领域的研究极易被搜索字符串遗漏。尽管各学科广泛引用其他领域文献的现象令人鼓舞，这说明不同研究领域普遍能够知晓彼此的研究成果，但为避免自然术语不必要的泛化并提升文献可检索性，我们提出四大核心自然术语组：（"户外学习" 或 "户外教育"）、（"自然" 或 "天然"）、（"绿色空间"）与（"生物多样性" 或 "树木"），可供各领域统一使用。我们特别建议，每篇论文中至少应包含其中一组术语，而综述类文献的检索字符串则应涵盖全部四组术语。此举有望增进人们对不同学科为这一不断拓展且意义重大的研究主题所做出的宝贵且多元贡献的理解。