Sustainability policy in the early 2000s is based on and therefore influenced by scientific literature on ‘transition’. The importance of this link has inspired the authors to explore the structure of cooperating authors and citation networks in the field. In order to understand ‘transition’ literature, we compare it with an alternative term for change, ‘transformation’, which is also used in the context of socio-technical shifts towards sustainability. We expose the different structures of these fields with an overview of keywords, key references, key authors, and the coherence between references and authors. By analysing co-author and citation networks, we find large differences in these groups of documents. The transition literature is characterised by a large network of directly and indirectly cooperating authors with clear clusters; transformation literature contains smaller author networks. Key transition authors are predominantly Dutch. They repeatedly write together and cite each other's work. The transition literature is tightly knit with high degrees of internal references and a clearly distinguishable core. Transformation literature has fewer connections between authors and articles. The connecting articles, each with many global citations, form its basis. This analysis can be used as a step to continue the debate on the role of transition and transformation literature in sustainability and renewable energy policy. The transformation literature teaches us that older streams of thought are still relevant and may be used as ‘glue’ for linking change with respect to sustainable energy to wider developments. Rediscovering existing literature in new combinations may lead to promising new views on sustainable energy