CorrespondenceTime for a systematic review: A response to Bassett and Fogelman's “Déjà vu or something new? The adaptation concept in the climate change literature”

•Critical review of an adaptation concept article.•Recognises the importance of critically analysing how adaptation is conceptualised in climate change literature.•Highlight show a systematic review of climate change adaptation literature can be achieved.•Reflects upon how methodological decisions influence research findings.

This critical review debates the issues raised in Bassett and Fogelman's 2013 article “Déjà vu or something new? The adaptation concept in the climate change literature”. After summarising the main findings of their article, we examine the methodology that Bassett and Fogelman adopted. We question the narrow sample of journals analysed, which we argue has led to a bias in the conclusions drawn. We use this opportunity to draw attention to the use of systematic literature reviews as an important methodological approach to synthesise the climate change adaptation literature. To demonstrate this we discuss the use of an alternate method more akin to that of a systematic literature review, and highlight where differences between this and the originally proposed methodology exist, and what this means for the concluding results.