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Research Article

Impact of the Sustainable Development Goals on the academic research agenda. A scientometric analysis

Roles Conceptualization, Investigation, Supervision, Validation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Research Institute on Policies for Social Transformation, Universidad Loyola Andalucía, Córdoba, Spain

Roles Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Supervision, Validation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Public Policy Observatory, Universidad Autónoma de Chile, Santiago, Chile

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Department of Finance and Accounting, Universidad Loyola Andalucía, Córdoba, Spain

Roles Conceptualization, Investigation, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Social Matters Research Group, Universidad Loyola Andalucía, Córdoba, Spain

• Antonio Sianes, 
• Alejandro Vega-Muñoz, 
• Pilar Tirado-Valencia, 
• Antonio Ariza-Montes

• Published: March 17, 2022
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265409
• Peer Review
• Reader Comments

Today, global challenges such as poverty, inequality, and sustainability are at the core of the academic debate. This centrality has only increased since the transition from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), whose scope is to shift the world on to a path of resilience focused on promoting sustainable development. The main purpose of this paper is to develop a critical yet comprehensive scientometric analysis of the global academic production on the SDGs, from its approval in 2015 to 2020, conducted using Web of Science (WoS) database. Despite it being a relatively short period of time, scholars have published more than five thousand research papers in the matter, mainly in the fields of green and sustainable sciences. The attained results show how prolific authors and schools of knowledge are emerging, as key topics such as climate change, health and the burden diseases, or the global governance of these issues. However, deeper analyses also show how research gaps exist, persist and, in some cases, are widening. Greater understanding of this body of research is needed, to further strengthen evidence-based policies able to support the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the achievement of the SDGs.

Citation: Sianes A, Vega-Muñoz A, Tirado-Valencia P, Ariza-Montes A (2022) Impact of the Sustainable Development Goals on the academic research agenda. A scientometric analysis. PLoS ONE 17(3): e0265409. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265409

Editor: Stefano Ghinoi, University of Greenwich, UNITED KINGDOM

Received: September 10, 2021; Accepted: March 1, 2022; Published: March 17, 2022

Copyright: © 2022 Sianes et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.

Funding: The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

1. Introduction

1.1. from the millennium agenda to the 2030 agenda and the sustainable development goals (sdgs).

To track the origins of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, we must recall the Millennium Agenda, which was the first global plan focused on fighting poverty and its more extreme consequences [ 1 ]. Approved in 2000, its guiding principle was that northern countries should contribute to the development of southern states via Official Development Assistance (ODA) flows. The commitment was to reach 0.7% of donors’ gross domestic product [ 2 ] to reduce poverty by half by 2015. The relative failure to reach this goal and the consolidation of a discourse of segregation between northern and southern countries [ 3 ] opened the door to strong criticism of the Millennium Agenda. Therefore, as 2015 approached, there were widespread calls for a profound reformulation of the system [ 4 ].

The world in 2015 was very different from that in the early 2000s. Globalization had reached every corner of the world, generating development convergence between countries but increasing inequalities within countries [ 5 , 6 ]. Increasing interest in the environmental crisis and other global challenges, such as the relocation of work and migration flows, consolidated a new approach to development and the need of a more encompassed agenda [ 7 ]. This new agenda was conceived after an integrating process that involved representatives from governments, cooperation agencies, nongovernmental organisations, global business, and academia. The willingness of the 2030 Agenda to ‘leave no one behind’ relies on this unprecedented global commitment by the international community [ 8 ].

As a result of this process, in 2015, the United Nations General Assembly formally adopted the document “Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” [ 9 ], later known as the 2030 Agenda. This new global agenda is an all-comprising strategy that seeks to inform and orient public policies and private interventions in an extensive range of fields, from climate change to smart cities and from labour markets to birth mortality, among many others.

The declared scope of the Agenda is to shift the world on to a path of resilience focused on promoting sustainable development. To do so, the 2030 Agenda operates under the guidance of five principles, formally known as the ‘5 Ps’: people, planet, prosperity, peace, and partnerships [ 10 ]. With these pivotal concepts in mind, the Agenda has established a total of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 specific targets to be pursued in a 15-year period, which reflects the scale and profound ambition of this new Agenda.

The SDGs do not only address what rich countries should do for the poor but rather what all countries should do together for the global well-being of this and future generations [ 4 ]. Thus, the SDGs cover a much broader range of issues than their predecessors, the Millennium Development Goals [ 11 ], and are intended to be universal on the guidance towards a new paradigm of sustainable development that the international community has been demanding since the 1992 Earth Summit [ 7 , 12 , 13 ].

Despite this potential, some criticise their vagueness, weakness, and unambitious character. Fukuda-Parr [ 14 ], see weaknesses on the simplicity of the SDGs, which can lead to a very narrow conception that reduces the integral concept of development. The issue of measurement is also problematic; for some researchers, the quantification of objectives not only reduces their complexity, but leads to them being carried out without considering the interdependencies between the objectives [ 12 , 13 ]. Other authors have identified difficulties associated with specifying some of the less visible, intangible aspects of their qualitative nature such as inclusive development and green growth [ 14 , 15 ]. Finally, Stafford-Smith et al. [ 16 ] state that their successful implementation also requires paying greater attention to the links across sectors, across societal actors and between and among low-, medium-, and high-income countries.

Despite these criticisms, the SDGs have undoubtedly become the framework for what the Brundtland report defined as our common future. Unlike conventional development agendas that focus on a restricted set of dimensions, the SDGs provide a holistic and multidimensional view of development [ 17 ]. In this line, Le Blanc [ 12 ] concludes that the SDGs constitute a system with a global perspective; because they consider the synergies and trade-offs between the different issues involved in sustainable development, and favour comprehensive thinking and policies.

1.2. Towards a categorization of the SDGs

There is an underlying lack of unanimity in the interpretation of the SDGs, which has given rise to alternative approaches that allow categorizing the issues involved in their achievement without losing sight of the integral vision of sustainable development [ 15 , 18 – 23 ]. However, such categorization of the SDGs makes it possible to approach them in a more holistic and integrated way, focusing on the issues that underlie sustainable development and on trying to elucidate their connections.

Among the many systematization proposals, and following the contributions of Hajer et al. [ 19 ], four connected perspectives can strengthen the universal relevance of the SDGs: a) ‘planetary boundaries’ that emphasize the urgency of addressing environmental concerns and calling on governments to take responsibility for global public goods; b) ‘The safe and just operating space’ to highlight the interconnectedness of social and environmental issues and their consequences for the redistribution of wealth and human well-being; c) ‘The energetic society’ that avoids the plundering of energy resources; and d) ‘green competition’ to stimulate innovation and new business practices that limit the consumption of resources.

Planetary boundaries demand international policies that coordinate efforts to avoid overexploitation of the planet [ 24 ]. Issues such as land degradation, deforestation, biodiversity loss and natural resource overexploitation exacerbate poverty and deepen inequalities [ 21 , 25 – 27 ]. These problems are further compounded by the increasing impacts of climate change with clear ramifications for natural systems and societies around the globe [ 21 , 28 ].

A safe and just operating space implies social inclusivity that ensures equity principles for sharing opportunities for development [ 15 , 29 ]. Furthermore, it requires providing equitable access to effective and high-quality preventive and curative care that reduces global health inequalities [ 30 , 31 ] and promotes human well-being. Studies such as that of Kruk et al. [ 32 ] analyse the reforms needed in health systems to reduce mortality and the systemic changes necessary for high-quality care.

An energetic society demands global, regional and local production and consumption patterns as demands for energy and natural resources continue to increase, providing challenges and opportunities for poverty reduction, economic development, sustainability and social cohesion [ 21 ].

Finally, green competition establishes limits to the consumption of resources, engaging both consumers and companies [ 22 ] and redefining the relationship between firms and their suppliers in the supply chain [ 33 ]. These limits must also be introduced into life in cities, fostering a new urban agenda [ 34 , 35 ]. Poor access to opportunities and services offered by urban centres (a function of distance, transport infrastructure and spatial distribution) is a major barrier to improved livelihoods and overall development [ 36 ].

The diversification of development issues has opened the door to a wide range of new realities that must be studied under the guiding principles of the SDGs, which involve scholars from all disciplines. As Saric et al. [ 37 ] claimed, a shift in academic research is needed to contribute to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda. The identification of critical pathways to success based on sound research is needed to inform a whole new set of policies and interventions aimed at rendering the SDGs both possible and feasible [ 38 ].

1.3. The relevance and impact of the SDGs on academic research

In the barely five years since their approval, the SDGs have proven the ability to mobilize the scientific community and offer an opportunity for researchers to bring interdisciplinary knowledge to facilitate the successful implementation of the 2030 Agenda [ 21 ]. The holistic vision of development considered in the SDGs has impacted very diverse fields of knowledge, such as land degradation processes [ 25 , 26 ], health [ 39 ], energy [ 40 ] and tourism [ 41 ], as well as a priori further disciplines such as earth observation [ 42 ] and neurosurgery [ 43 ]. However, more importantly, the inevitable interdependencies, conflicts and linkages between the different SDGs have also emerged in the analyses, highlighting ideas such as the need for systemic thinking that considers the spatial and temporal connectivity of the SDGs, which calls for multidisciplinary knowledge. According to Le Blanc [ 12 ], the identification of the systemic links between the objectives can be a valuable undertaking for the scientific community in the coming years and sustainable development.

Following this line, several scientific studies have tried to model the relationships between the SDGs in an attempt to clarify the synergies between the objectives, demonstrating their holistic nature [ 12 , 17 , 20 , 44 , 45 ]. This knowledge of interdependencies can bring out difficulties and risks, or conversely the drivers, in the implementation of the SDGs, which will facilitate their achievement [ 22 ]. In addition, it will allow proposing more transformative strategies to implement the SDG agenda, since it favours an overall vision that is opposed to the false illusion that global problems can be approached in isolation [ 19 ].

The lack of prioritisation of the SDGs has been one of the issues raised regarding their weakness, which should also be addressed by academics. For example, Gupta and Vegelin [ 15 ] analyse the dangers of inclusive development prioritising economic issues, relegating social or ecological inclusivity to the background, or the relational aspects of inclusivity that guarantee the existence of laws, policies and global rules that favour equal opportunities. Holden et al. [ 46 ] suggest that this prioritisation should be established according to three moral criteria: the satisfaction of human needs, social equity and respect for environmental limits. These principles must be based on ethical values that, according to Burford et al. [ 47 ], constitute the missing pillar of sustainability. In this way, the ethical imperatives of the SDGs and the values implicit in the discourses on sustainable development open up new possibilities for transdisciplinary research in the social sciences [ 46 , 47 ].

Research on SDG indicators has also been relevant in the academic world, as they offer an opportunity to replace conventional progress metrics such as gross domestic product (GDP) with other metrics more consistent with the current paradigm of development and social welfare that takes into account such aspects as gender equality, urban resilience and governance [ 20 , 48 ].

The study of the role of certain development agents, including companies, universities or supranational organisations, also opens up new areas of investigation for researchers. Some studies have shown the enthusiastic acceptance of the SDGs by companies [ 22 , 49 ]. For Bebbington and Unerman [ 50 ], the study of the role of organisations in achieving the SDGs should be centred around three issues: challenging definitions of entity boundaries to understand their full impacts, introducing new conceptual frameworks for analysis of the context within which organisations operate and re-examining the conceptual basis of justice, responsibility and accountability. On the other hand, the academic community has recognized that knowledge and education are two basic pillars for the transition towards sustainable development, so it may also be relevant to study the responsibility of higher education in achieving the SDGs [ 47 , 50 ]. Institutional sustainability and governance processes are issues that should be addressed in greater depth through research [ 47 ].

Finally, some authors have highlighted the role of information technologies (ICT) in achieving the SDGs [ 23 ] and their role in addressing inequality or vulnerability to processes such as financial exclusion [ 51 ], which opens up new avenues for research.

Despite this huge impact of the SDGs on academic research, to the best of our knowledge, an overall analysis of such an impact to understand its profoundness and capillarity is missing in the literature. To date, reviews have focused on the implementation of specific SDGs [ 52 – 61 ], on specific topics and collectives [ 62 – 70 ], on traditional fields of knowledge, now reconsidered in light of the SDGs [ 71 – 73 ] and on contributions from specific regions or countries [ 74 , 75 ]. By relying on scientometric techniques and data mining analyses, this paper collects and analyses the more than 5,000 papers published on the SDGs to pursue this challenging goal and fill this knowledge gap.

This article aims to provide a critical review of the scientific research on SDGs, a concept that has emerged based on multiple streams of thinking and has begun to be consolidated as of 2015. As such, global references on this topic are identified and highlighted to manage pre-existing knowledge to understand relationships among researchers and with SDG dimensions to enhance the presently dispersed understanding of this subject and its areas of further development. A scientometric meta-analysis of publications on SDGs is conducted to achieve this objective. Mainstream journals from the Web of Science (WoS) are used to identify current topics, the most involved journals, the most prolific authors, and the thematic areas around which the current academic SDG debate revolves.

Once Section 1 has revised on the related literature to accomplish the main objective, Section 2 presents the research methodology. Section 3 presents the main results obtained, and Section 4 critically discusses these results. The conclusion and the main limitations of the study are presented in Section 5.

2. Materials and methods

In methodological terms, this research applies scientometrics as a meta-analytical means to study the evolution of documented scientific knowledge on the Sustainable Development Goals [ 76 – 81 ], taking as a secondary source of information academic contributions (i.e. articles, reviews, editorials, etc.) indexed in the Web of Science (WoS). To ensure that only peer-reviewed contributions authored by individual researchers are retrieved and that such publications have a worldwide prestige assessment, all of them should be published on journals indexed in the Journal Citation Report (JCR), either as part of the Sciences Citation Index Expanded or the Social Sciences Citation Index [ 82 – 84 ].

Following the recommendations of previous studies [ 85 ], it was decided to apply the next search vector from 2015 to 2020 to achieve the research objectives TS = (Sustainable NEAR/0 Development NEAR/0 Goals), which allows the extraction of data with 67 fields for each article registered in WoS.

As the first step, to give meaning to subsequent analyses, we tested the presence of exponential growth in the production of documented knowledge that allows a continuous renewal of knowledge [ 76 , 86 ].

As a second action, given the recent nature of the subject studied, it is of interest to map the playing field [ 87 ] using VOSviewer software version 1.6.16 [ 88 ], to know which topics are most addressed in the matter of SDGs. This analysis seeks an approach, both through the concentration of Keyword Plus® [ 89 ] and by analysing the references used as input in the production of knowledge, which can be treated as cocitations, coupling-citations and cross-citations [ 90 ], using the h-index, in citation terms, as discriminant criteria in the selection of articles [ 91 – 93 ]. This methodology will allow us to establish production, impact and relationship metrics [ 80 , 85 , 87 , 94 , 95 ].

Finally, it is of interest to explore the possible concentrations that may arise. Using Lotka’s Law, we estimated the possible prolific authors and their areas of work in SDGs, and using Bradford’s Law, we conducted a search of a possible adjustment to a geometric series of the concentration zones of journals and therefore a potential nucleus where a profuse discussion on SDGs is taking place [ 96 – 100 ].

3.1. Configuration of the academic production on SDGs

The results present a total of 5,281 articles for a period of six years (2015–2020) in 1,135 journals, with over 60% of these documents published in the last two years. The total of articles is distributed among authors affiliated with 7,418 organisations from 181 countries/regions, giving thematic coverage to 183 categories of the Journal Citation Report-Web of Science (JCR-WoS). Table 1 shows the distribution among the top ten JCR-WoS categories, highlighting the prevalence of journals indexed in green and environmental sciences and, thus, in the Science Index-Expanded.

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3.2. Existence of research critical mass

Fig 1 shows the regression model for the period 2015–2020, the last year with complete records consolidated in the Web of Science. The results obtained show significant growth in the number of studies on SDGs, with an R 2 adjustment greater than 96%. The exponential nature of the model shows that a ‘critical mass’ is consolidating around the research on this topic, as proposed by the Law of Exponential Growth of Science over Time [ 76 ], which in some way gives meaning to this research and to obtaining derived results.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265409.g001

3.3. Establishment of concentrations

In accordance with Lotka’s Law, 22,336 authors were identified of the 5,281 articles under study. From this author set, 136 (≈sqrt (22,336)) are considered prolific authors with a contribution to nine or more works. However, a second restriction, even more demanding, is to identify those prolific authors who are also prolific in contemporary terms. Although SDG studies are recent, the growth production rates are extremely high. As previously shown, for the period 2015–2020, 64% of the publications are concentrated between 2019–2020. Based on this second restriction, for 3,400 articles of the 5,281 articles published in 2019 and 2020, and a total of 15,120 authors, only eight prolific authors manage to sustain a publication number that equals or exceeds nine articles. These authors are listed and characterized in Table 2 .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265409.t002

The analysis shown in Table 2 highlights the University of Washington’s participation in health issues with Murray and Hay (coauthors of eight articles in the period 2019–2020), who are also important in the area of health for the prolific authors Yaya and Bhutta. The environmental SDGs mark a strong presence with Abhilash, Leal-Filho and Kalin. The affiliation of Abhilsash (Banaras Hindu University) is novel, as it is not part of the classic world core in knowledge production that is largely concentrated in the United States and Europe. It is worth noting that other prolific authors belong to nonmainstream knowledge production world areas, such as Russia or Pakistan. Professor Alola also deserves mention; not only is he the only contemporary prolific author producing in the area of economics, but he is also producing knowledge in Turkey.

In the same way, at the journal level, the potential establishment of concentration areas and determination of a deep discussion nucleus are analysed using Bradford’s law.

With a percentage error of 0.6%, between the total journal number and the total journal number estimated by the Bradford series, the database shows a core of 18 journals (2%) where one in three articles published are concentrated (see Table 3 ).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265409.t003

Regarding the number of contributions by journal, Sustainability has the largest number of studies on SDGs, in which 689 (13%) of the 5,281 articles studied are concentrated. The Journal of Cleaner Production, indexed to WoS categories related to Environmental SDGs, is the second most prominent journal, with 2.7% participation of the articles (147). Both journals are followed by the multidisciplinary journal Plos One, with 2.2% of the total dataset. In terms of impact factor, the 60 points of the health journal The Lancet are superlative in the whole, which in the other cases ranges between 2.000 and 7.246. As shown in Table 4 , we have developed a “Prominence ranking” by weighting article production by impact factor. This metric shows The Lancet, with only 40 articles on SDGs, as the most relevant journal, followed by Sustainability, which becomes relevant due to the high number of publications (689) despite an impact factor of 2.576. These journals are followed by the Journal of Cleaner Production with 147 articles and an impact factor of 7.246.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265409.t004

3.4. Thematic coverage

Concerning the thematic coverage, Fig 2A and 2B show a diversity of 7,003 Keyword Plus® (KWP), consistently connected to a total of 7,141 KWP assigned by Clarivate as metadata to the set of 5,281 articles studied, which presents a strong concentration in a small number of terms (red colour in the heat map generated with VOSviewer version 1.6.16).

a) Keywords Plus® heatmap and b) heat map zoom to highlight the highest concentration words, data source WoS, 2020.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265409.g002

Based on this result, a concentration sphere with 85 KWP (= sqrt (7,141)) is established according to Zipf’s Law, which is presented in 50 or more articles out of the total of 5,281. Moreover, a central concentration sphere of 9 KWPs (= sqrt (85)) can be found, with keywords present in a range of 178 to 346 articles out of a total of 5,281. These nine pivotal keywords are all connected in terms of co-occurrence (associated by Clarivate two or more to the same article) and within papers with an average number of citations in WoS that vary from 9.27 to 16.69, as shown in Table 5 . The nine most prominent key words in relation to the study of the SDGs are health, climate change, management, impact, challenges, governance, systems, policy and framework. These terms already suggest some of the themes around which the debate and research in this area revolves.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265409.t005

The prominence of these keywords is obtained by combining the level of occurrence and average citations (see Table 5 ): on the one hand, the occurrence or number of articles with which the KWP is associated (e.g., Management, 346) and, on the other hand, the average citations presented by the articles associated with these words (e.g., Framework. 9.27). The final score (prominence) mixes both concepts, given the product of the occurrences and the average citations of each KWP in proportion to the mean values (e.g., (330 * 16.69)/(246 * 11.96) = 1.9).

3.5. Relations within the academic contributions

The coupling-citation analysis using VOSviewer identifies the 5,281 articles under study, of which only those found in the h-index as a whole have been considered (the h-index in the database is 81, as there are 81 articles cited 81 or more times). The bibliographic coupling analysis found consistent connections in only 73 of these articles, gathered in seven clusters. Such clusters and unconnected articles are represented in Fig 3 .

Data source WoS. 2020.

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In simple terms, discrimination belonging to one cluster or another depends on the total link number that an article has with the other 80 articles based on the use of the common references. Table 6 specifies the articles belonging to the same publication cluster in relation to Fig 3 .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265409.t006

Bibliographic coupling analysis can also be used to link the seven clusters that use common references with the field document title (TI), publication name (SO), Keyword Plus-KWP (ID), and research areas (SC). This allows the identification of the main topics of each cluster. As shown in Table 7 , cluster 1 (red) concerns environmental and public affairs; cluster 2 (green), health; cluster 3 (blue), economics; cluster 4 (yellow), health–the burden of disease; cluster 5 (violet), economics–Kuznets curve; cluster 6 (light blue), energy; and cluster 7 (orange), soil—land.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265409.t007

3.6. Outstanding contributions in the field

The cocitation analysis identified a total of 232,081 references cited by the 5,281 articles under study. It suggests taking as references to review those that present 44 or more occurrences in the database (232,081/5,281). This method results in 34 articles that have been used as main inputs for the scientific production under analysis, cited between 44 and 504 times. A result worth highlighting is that one in three of these documents corresponds to reports from international organisations, such as the United Nations (UN), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), World Bank Group (WB) or World Health Organization (WHO). However, it is also possible to identify 21 peer-reviewed scientific contributions. These papers are identified in detail in Table 8 .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265409.t008

The cocitation analysis yields the degree of relationship of these 21 most cited research articles. It is how such references have been used simultaneously in the same article. Fig 4 displays this information (to help readers, it has also been included in Table 8 , centrality in 21 column).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265409.g004

According to the relationship level in the most cited article’s selection, the graph ( Fig 3 ) has been clustered in three colours: cluster 1 in red colour groups the highest articles proportion (9) published between 2013 and 2017 in 7 journals. These journals present an impact factor (IF) quite heterogeneous, with values ranging from 2.576 (Sustainability) to 60.39 (Lancet) and indexed in one or more of the following WoS categories: Environmental Sciences (4 journals), Green & Sustainable Science & Technology (4), Environmental Studies (2), Development Studies (1), Medicine, General & Internal (1), Multidisciplinary Sciences (1) and Regional & Urban Planning (1). Three of these articles are cited 130–150 times in the 5,281-article dataset and, at the same time, show a connection centrality of 95–100% with the other 20 articles in the graph, implying a high level of cocitation. The other two clusters group six articles each. The articles of cluster 2 (green colour) are included in a widespread WoS category set: Environmental Sciences (3 journals), Geosciences, Multidisciplinary (2), Ecology (1), Economics (1), Energy & Fuels (1), Environmental Studies (1), Green & Sustainable Science & Technology (1), Materials Science, Multidisciplinary (1), Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences (1) and Multidisciplinary Sciences (1). The research of Nilsson [ 101 ] was used as a reference in 176 of the 5,281 articles under study, showing a centrality of 100%. This great connection level is also featured in another less cited article [ 17 ] published in Earth’s Future. Finally, cluster 3 (blue) highlights six articles concentrated in three highly cited journals in the WoS categories: Medicine, General & Internal (Lancet) and Multidisciplinary Sciences (Nature and Science), whose IFs range from 41.9 to 60.4. In general, they are articles less connected (cocited) to the set of 21, with centralities of 30–90%. Two of these articles were referenced 140 times or more, although one was published in 2009. Thus, cluster 3 concentrates the references mainly in journals on environmental issues with scientific-technological orientation, as well as classic and high-impact WoS journals (The Lancet, Nature and Science). It is worth noting that some of these top journals may not be listed in Table 4 as they are not included in the Bradford’s nucleus, due to their comparatively low number of contributions published.

Finally, continuing with the thematic study, a cross-citation analysis was developed. Considering only the 81 articles that are part of the h-index of the total set of 5,821 articles under study, the citations that are presented among this elite article set are explored using VosViewer. The cross-citation analysis detects existing relationships between 37 of these 81 articles. Once the directionality of the citations has been analysed, a directed temporal graph is generated using Pajek 64 version 5.09, which is presented in Fig 5 .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265409.g005

Fig 5 shows how these 37 highly cited articles are related to each other (the number after the name is the publication year), considering that some of these articles are cited as references in other articles in this set. The relationships between the articles in Fig 5 are complex and should be understood under a temporal sequence logic in the citation between two articles. However, some trends can be highlighted.

On the one hand, some contributions stand out for their centrality. Lim et al. [ 102 ] is connected with eight of the 37 articles (21.6%) on citing relationships, as is Fullman et al. [ 27 ], which relates to seven of the 37 articles (18.9%). Both authors researched health issues and are also coauthors of nine articles of the dataset under study. On the other hand, according to the SDG segmentation proposed, Hajer et al. [ 19 ] and Le Blanc [ 12 ] are recognized as seminal articles in social SDGs, since they contribute to the production of other subsequent articles in the set of 37. On the other hand, in health matters, seminal articles are Norheim et al. [ 103 ] and You et al. [ 104 ], two articles published in The Lancet whose citations also contribute to the production of the set introduced as Fig 5 .

4. Discussion

The main purpose of this paper was to develop a critical and comprehensive scientometric analysis of the global academic literature on the SDGs from 2015 to 2020, conducted using the WoS database. The attained results have made it possible to comprehend and communicate to the scientific community the current state of the debate on the SDGs, thus offering insights for future lines of research.

To achieve the objectives, the present study analysed a broad spectrum of 5,281 articles published in 1,135 WoS journals. A first aspect that is striking is the great diversity of topics addressed in these studies, which reflects the multidimensionality of the SDGs. Despite this, more than half of the articles are concentrated in two JCR-WoS categories (Environmental Sciences and Green Sustainable Science Technology), a percentage that exceeds 80% if the categories Environmental Studies and Public Environmental Occupational Health are added. Thus, on the one hand, the size of the body of literature and the broad spectrum of topics more than covers the four perspectives of analysis that are relevant in research on the SDGs, according to Hajer et al. [ 19 ]: planetary boundaries, the safe and just operating space, the energetic society and, last, green competition. However, on the other hand, results also highlight a strong focus on the environmental aspects of the SDGs, which undoubtedly concentrate the most contributions.

The Sustainable Development Goals constitute an area of research that has experienced exponential scientific growth, a tendency already suggested by previous studies [ 81 , 105 ], thus complying with the fundamental principles of Price’s law [ 76 ], which suggests the need for this exponential growth to manifest a continuous renewal of knowledge on the subject under study. The results of this study highlight a significant increase in the number of articles published in the last two years, given that six out of ten articles were published in 2019 or 2020. This tendency confirms how the SDGs continue to arouse great interest in the scientific community and that the debate on the interpretation of sustainable development is still open and very present in academia.

The variety of knowledge areas from which science can approach the SDGs demonstrates the different avenues that exist to address different research questions and their multidimensional nature, as anticipated by Pradhan et al. [ 17 ], a dispersion not far from the traditional fields of knowledge or the conventional dimensions of sustainability. Investigating the reasons for this dispersion in academic research on the SDGs may be a topic of great interest, as anticipated by Burford et al. [ 47 ] and Le Blanc [ 12 ], since understanding the phenomenon of development can only be achieved if the main challenges, both current and future, can be viewed holistically and comprehensively. Along these lines, Imaz and Eizagirre [ 106 ] state that the complexity of the study of the SDGs is undoubtedly marked by their aspiration for universality, by their broad scope encompassing the three basic pillars of sustainable development (economic development, environmental sustainability and social inclusion) and by their desire for integration, motivated by the complexity of the challenges and by the countless interlinkages and interdependencies.

This natural multidimensionality of the SDGs calls for strong cooperation and collaboration between researchers, universities, and countries. In this sense, the scientometric analysis provides good news, as more than a hundred prolific authors (defined as those authors who have published nine or more articles on this topic) have been identified, although these are reduced to eight in contemporary terms (2019 or 2020). This select group of eight authors who lead research and publishing on the SDGs (sometimes with dual or triple affiliations) produce knowledge for universities and research centres both in the global north and the global south: Canada, the U.S., the UK, Germany, Pakistan, Turkey, India, Benin, Russia and Cyprus. The protagonist role played by research institutes in countries in the north has already been acknowledged by previous studies [ 81 , 105 ]. However, the emergence of top scholars producing academic knowledge from developing countries is a more recent tendency, which underscores the pertinence of this analysis.

A closer look at the academic and research curricula of these authors leads to the conclusion that the study of the SDGs does not constitute a final field of research at present. These researchers come from very heterogeneous disciplines, so their approach to the SDGs is also multidisciplinary. To illustrate it with an example, the most cited article by Professor Abhilash of Banaras Hindu University (the most published contemporary prolific author along with Christopher Murray of the University of Washington), with 363 WoS citations in February 2021 alone, is on the use and application of pesticides in India.

In more concrete terms, following Wu et al.’s [ 23 ] classification as a frame of reference, the eight most prolific contemporary authors approach the SDG research problem from two main domains, one of an environmental nature (Abhilash, Leal-Filho, Alola and Kalin) and the other related to health (Murray, Yaya, Bhutta, and Hay). The most common journals where these authors publish on environmental issues are the Journal of Cleaner Production, Higher Education, Water and Science of the Total Environment. Health researchers, on the other hand, tend to publish mainly in the journals of the BMC group, The Lancet and Nature.

This wide diversity of academic fora can be clarified with the application of Bradford’s laws, which identified a core of 18 journals that bring together the debates and academic discussions about the SDGs. It is worth noting that the 18 journals that form the core are distributed in 16 different thematic areas or WoS categories: Development Studies; Ecology; Economics; Education & Educational Research; Engineering, Environmental; Environmental Sciences; Environmental Studies; Green & Sustainable Science & Technology; Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism; International Relations; Medicine, General & Internal; Multidisciplinary Sciences; Public, Environmental & Occupational Health; Regional & Urban Planning; and Water Resources. On the one hand, this wide dispersion in terms of areas of knowledge suggests that research on the SDGs can be studied from different approaches and disciplines, which opens up a wide range of possibilities for researchers from different branches of scientific knowledge, as well as an opportunity for multidisciplinary collaborations. On the other hand, this heterogeneity might also hinder the communication and dissemination of learning from one field to another. The cross-citation analysis provided in Fig 5 suggests this possibility, as seminal works are related to thematic disciplines more than to the seminal contributions identified in Table 8 .

In this sense, it is interesting to analyse the top-cited articles in the database, as they provide a clear picture of the field of knowledge. One-third of these contributions are provided by international institutions, such as the United Nations Development Program or the World Bank, which provide analyses of a normative nature. This prevalence reflects some weaknesses in the academic basis of the analysis of the SDGs as a whole from a scientific approach, an idea reinforced when the most cited papers are analysed. In fact, only six papers have reached more than 100 citations by contributions included in the database [ 4 , 12 , 24 , 29 , 101 , 107 ]. Not only were these papers largely published before the approval of the SDGs themselves, but half of them are editorial material, inviting contributions but are not evidence-based research papers. Highlighting the nature of the most cited contributions does not diminish their value but does speak to the normative approach that underlies the analysis of the SDGs when addressed not individually but as an overall field of research.

Regarding topics and themes of interest, the scientometric analysis carried out in this research identified a strong concentration around a small number of terms, as represented in a heat map ( Fig 2A and 2B ). All these topics constitute a potential source of inspiration for future research on the subject.

Through an analysis of the main keywords, it can be seen that the studies focused on the traditional areas of health and climate change. However, these keywords also provide new elements for discussion, as they uncover some other areas of study that have been highlighted by the literature. First, the appearance of the term Management as one of the main keywords reveals the importance that researchers give to the role of business in achieving the SDGs, as already suggested by Scheyvens et al. [ 49 ] and Spangenber [ 22 ]. Second, the need to address new governance processes and to seek global solutions, as suggested by authors such as Sachs [ 4 ], underscore the keywords Governance, Policy and Framework, all aspects deemed crucial for the achievement of the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda [ 108 ]. Finally, other keywords such as Impact, Challenges or Systems are a clear example of the complexity and interdependencies that exist in research on the SDGs, considered an essential aspect by Griggs et al. [ 13 ] or Le Blanc [ 12 ]. The attained results highlight some of the connections between different domains of sustainable development by identifying categories and themes that are highly related in the groupings that emerge from the bibliographic coupling analysis.

In general terms, the holistic vision of development embodied by the SDGs has drawn the attention of very different disciplines, fields and areas of scientific knowledge. However, seven major areas of research have emerged: environmental and public affairs, health, economics, health-burden of disease, economics-Kuznets curve, energy and soil-land. These areas are not far removed from the current paradigm of sustainable development, where poverty or inequality are problems that are not exclusive to developing countries [ 5 , 6 ]. Thus, emerging issues that mainly affect first world countries, including urban planning, the impact of activities such as hospitality, sport or tourism, or education for development, are starting to stand out with increasing intensity, which continues to open new avenues for future research.

In short, the results of the scientometric analysis have provided a systematized overview of the research conducted in relation to the SDGs since the approval of the 2030 Agenda. Among other things, the critical analysis has identified the main trends with respect to the number of publications, the most relevant journals, the most prolific authors, institutions and countries, and the collaborative networks between authors and the research areas at the epicentre of the debate on the SDGs. As Olawumi and Chan [ 105 ] already acknowledged, the power research networks applied to the study of the SDGs offer valuable insights and in-depth understandings not only of key scholars and institutions but also about the state of research fields, emerging trends and salient topics.

Consequently, the results of this work contribute to the systematic analysis of scientific research on the SDGs, which can be of great interest for decision-making at the governmental level (e.g., which research to fund and which not to fund), at the corporate level and at the level of research centres, both public and private. Furthermore, the scientometric analysis carried out may provide clues for academics regarding future lines of research and topics of interest where the debate on the SDGs is currently situated.

5. Conclusions, limitations and future research lines

As could not be otherwise, all research in the field of social sciences has a series of limitations that must be clearly and transparently explained. The two most relevant in this study are the following.

First, although the study of the SDGs is a recent object of research, the rate of publication is growing exponentially, such that scientific knowledge is renewed practically in its entirety every two years. The only articles that escape this scientometric obsolescence are those with a high number of citations (h-index). This circumstance generates a temporal limitation in terms of the conclusions obtained in the present investigation, conclusions that should be revised periodically until the growth of publications stabilizes by adopting a logistic form, as recommended by Sun and Lin [ 109 ].

Second, the articles used as the basis for this research were restricted to those published in the JCR-WoS. This decision was made for two main reasons. On the one hand, the limitation was to eliminate potential distortions that could occur as a result of the constant growth of journals that are incorporated annually into other databases, such as ESCI-WoS (Emerging Sources Citation Index). On the other hand, it is impossible to compare impact indices if integrating other databases such as Scopus.

We are aware of these limitations, which for developing a more selective analysis imply assuming the cost of less coverage in exchange.

Regarding future lines of research, the analysis highlights how the study of the SDGs is failing to balance their economic, social and sustainability components, as it still maintains an overall focus on environmental studies.

This suggests the urgency of increasing studies on social SDGs, key topics on the 2030 Agenda including equity (SDGs 4, 5 and 10), social development (SDGs 11 and 16) and governance (SDG 17). These topics are part of the public discourse and currently a source of social pressure in many latitudes, but they are still research areas that are necessary to deepen.

Economic sustainability studies are more present, but highly concentrated, in health economics, as previously acknowledged by Meschede [ 81 ]. Academic research on the SDGs against poverty (SDG 1) and hunger (SDG 2) has not achieved such a prominent place as health. Even less so, the economics of technological development (SDGs 8 and 9), which are recognized as crucial for economic development.

Finally, the environmental SDGs do not achieve a balance among themselves either. Academic research has prioritized action for climate (SDG 13) and industrial and human consumption, mainly water (SDG 6) and energy (SDG 7). New research should be developed in the area of land (SDG 15), life under the sea (SDG 14) and sustainable production (SDG 12).

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Original research article, unveiling the research landscape of sustainable development goals and their inclusion in higher education institutions and research centers: major trends in 2000–2017.

• 1 Department of Industrial Management, Industrial Design and Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, University of Gävle, Gävle, Sweden
• 2 Department of Biology, Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies (CESAM), Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal
• 3 Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, Leiria, Portugal
• 4 Life Quality Research Centre, Polytechnic Institute of Santarém, Santarém, Portugal
• 5 Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands
• 6 Department of Science and Innovation-National Research Foundation of South Africa Centre of Excellence in Scientometrics and STI Policy (SciSTP), Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) have become the international framework for sustainability policy. Its legacy is linked with the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), established in 2000. In this paper a scientometric analysis was conducted to: (1) Present a new methodological approach to identify the research output related to both SDGs and MDGs (M&SDGs) from 2000 to 2017, with the aim of mapping the global research related to M&SDGs; (2) Describe the thematic specialization based on keyword co-occurrence analysis and citation bursts; and (3) Classify the scientific output into individual SDGs (based on an ad-hoc glossary) and assess SDGs interconnections. Publications conceptually related to M&SDGs (defined by the set of M&SDG core publications and a scientometric expansion based on direct citations) were identified in the in-house CWTS Web of Science database. A total of 25,299 publications were analyzed, of which 21,653 (85.59%) were authored by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) or academic research centers (RCs). The findings reveal the increasing participation of these organizations in this research (660 institutions in 2000–2005 to 1,744 institutions involved in 2012–2017). Some institutions present both a high production and specialization on M&SDG topics (e.g., London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and World Health Organization); and others with a very high specialization although lower production levels (e.g., Stockholm Environment Institute). Regarding the specific topics of research, health (especially in developing countries), women , and socio-economic issues are the most salient. Moreover, it has been observed an important interlinkage in the research outputs of some SDGs (e.g., SDG11 “Sustainable Cities and Communities” and SDG3 “Good Health and Well-Being”). This study provides first evidence of such interconnections, and the results of this study could be useful for policymakers in order to promote a more evidenced-based setting for their research agendas on SDGs.

Introduction

Increasing awareness-building in sustainable development goals.

Sustainability goals have emerged as a global strategy to solve critical world problems, as a result of the global environmental concerns that started in the 1970s. The origin of the notion of sustainable development can be traced back to its most-recognized milestone in 1987; the definition of Sustainable Development in the Brundtland Report 1 . Afterwards, different summits and conferences were held in which sustainability and sustainable development were the core discussions (e.g., Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992). During these early years, sustainable development was a guiding principle to bridge the North-South division ( Siegel and Bastos Lima, 2020 ). However, what was meant by development was replete with competing ideas about its essential aims, together with various theories about its achievement ( Fukuda-Parr and McNeill, 2019 ). In this context, development goals became an unprecedented effort to bridge those divides and find common ground “with a set of ideas as the consensus global norm concerning both the ends and the means of development” ( Fukuda-Parr, 2019 ). These development goals (MDGs and SDGs) are designed with the same principles: (1) Statement of a social political priority ( goal ); (2) Time-bound quantitative aspect to be achieved ( target ); and (3) Measurement tools to monitor progress ( indicator ) ( Fukuda-Parr and McNeill, 2019 ). The goals represent international agreements that create narratives and frame debates about the conceptualization of development challenges ( Fukuda-Parr, 2019 ). It can be argued that the influence of these goals on policy, governments, and other societal stakeholders is mainly driven by their compelling discourse.

The First Development Goals: Millennium Development Goals

In 2000 eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were created at the Millennium Summit, with the ambition of their being achieved by 2015. These MDGs tackled topics such as extreme poverty and hunger, child mortality, and maternal health 2 . They represented an unprecedented effort to tackle the needs of the world's poorest countries. However, MDGs were criticized for: (1) Not being adequately aligned “with human rights standards and principles;” (2) Being formulated in a top-down process, only driven by international organizations and developing country governments; (3) Lacking accountability mechanisms; and (4) Omission of important priorities, i.e., inequality ( International Human Rights Instruments, 2008 ; Fukuda-Parr, 2016 , 2019 ). Another criticism of the MDGs was that they had unsuccessful effects in some important regions, such as Africa ( Easterly, 2009 ). Despite these criticisms, although indeed not all goals were achieved by 2015, some progress was acknowledged ( United Nations, 2015a ). For instance, “the number of people living in extreme poverty has declined by more than half since 1990 and the literacy rate among youth aged 15–24 has increased globally, from 83% in 1990 to 91% in 2015” ( Ki-Moon, 2015 ).

The Present: The Sustainable Development Goals

In 2012, the Conference Rio+20 adopted a 15-year plan called Agenda 2030 (2015–2030), targeting sustainable economic growth, social development, and environmental protection ( United Nations, 2015b ). As a result, Agenda 2030 established 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with a deadline in 2030. This agenda was settled as a normative shift ( Fukuda-Parr and McNeill, 2019 ) and has even been institutionalized as a policy paradigm ( Siegel and Bastos Lima, 2020 ). The agenda has 169 targets and various indicators for monitoring their achievement. The topics of these goals cover five critical areas (the so-called 5 P's); People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace, and Partnership ( United Nations, 2015b ). While MDGs encompassed the notion of development as the North-South project to meet basic needs to end poverty, SDGs reconceptualised development as the “universal aspiration for human progress that is inclusive and sustainable” ( Fukuda-Parr and McNeill, 2019 ). Different from the MDGs, the SDGs pay an increased attention to the interlinkages among different sustainability dimensions and give great attention to inclusiveness ; clearly captured in their motto “No one left behind” ( Siegel and Bastos Lima, 2020 ). In practical terms, SDGs expand with respect to MDGs in: (1) Scope (e.g., there are new goals); (2) Reach (involving developed and developing countries); and (3) Engagement of a larger set of societal actors (e.g., citizen councils) in both their creation and implementation ( Fisher and Fukuda-Parr, 2019 ). However, no specific mechanisms to ensure their applicability across different countries have been settled. One of the main concerns is that SDGs rely on individual countries and the goodwill of their governments on how to pursue and implement each of the goals. In this regard, Siegel and Bastos Lima (2020) pointed out that actual SDG-driven transformations depend on the political context of each country, particularly on how these goals are interpreted and prioritized at the national level. These authors even remarked that despite the very concrete formulation of SDGs, their conceptualization (and we could add, their operationalization ) still leaves room for interpretation. Thus, the pursuing of some specific goals over others by some countries is known as “cherry-picking,” although quite often interpreted as conformity with the whole agenda ( Forestier and Kim, 2020 ). However, the aim of Agenda 2030 and its accomplishment is fundamentally based on the integrative and indivisible nature of the goals ( United Nations, 2015b ), therefore “cherry-picking” should not be an acceptable approach, bringing attention to the relevance of monitoring the engagement and consecution of all SDGs by all countries.

The Role of Monitoring the Achievement of SDGs

In contrast to MDGs, monitoring became a key issue for SDGs. Since the launch of SDGs, an SDG Index 3 has been developed, aiming to evaluate the achievement of each goal across all countries. The SDG index allows identifying priorities for action, support discussions, and debates to identify gaps in the development of the goals. A preliminary set of 330 indicators was introduced in March 2015 ( Hák et al., 2016 ), but only 232 indicators were adopted. This is different from MDGs, in which indicators were only decided on an internal basis 4 . The development of indicators to monitor the achievement of SDGs was based on two parallel processes: (1) Multi-stakeholder public consultation led by the UN General Assembly Open Working Group on SDGs (established in 2013); and (2) Intergovernmental negotiations. Moreover, the indicators developed “come from a mix of official and non-official data sources” (e.g., the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, among others), all subjected to an extensive and rigorous data validation process [ Sachs et al., 2018 , 2019 ]. However, it has been argued that the translation of goals into quantitative indicators can “distort” their meaning, since indicators can be reinterpreted or used to create perverse discourses or incentives ( Fukuda-Parr and McNeill, 2019 ).

Interlinkages Among SDGs

Another distinctive aspect of SDGs in contrast to MDGs is the role of the relationships and interlinkages among the different goals. Several studies already analyzed the interlinkages and interdependencies between pairs of SDGs, both across or within SDGs, particularly regarding the effects that achieving one goal may have on the ability to achieve others. Pradhan et al. (2017) analyzed the synergies (i.e., progress in one goal favors progress in another) and trade-offs (progress in one goal hinders progress in another) within and across SDGs. They found that SDG1 “No poverty,” or SDG3 “Good health and Well-being” have synergetic relationships with many goals, while SDG12 “Responsible consumption and production” is associated with trade-offs as it has negative correlations with 10 other goals based on the data pair analysis. Later, Lusseau and Mancini (2019) analyzed how key synergies and trade-offs between SDG goals and targets, based on the World Bank categories data, vary with respect to a country's gross national income (GNI) per capita. They highlighted that SDG10 “Reduce Inequalities,” SDG12 “Responsible Consumption and Production,” and SDG13 “Climate Action” are the most central ones, interacting negatively (according to the negative strength value calculated in their study) with many other SDGs (for example in high-income countries SDG12 and SDG13 are antagonistic, based on the Laplacian graph and the eigenvalue centrality value). These kinds of conflicting relationships between SDGs suggest a need for differentiated policy priorities between countries as they progress toward the 2030 Agenda. Kroll et al. (2019) also analyzed trade-offs and synergies between goals and future trends until 2030 based on the SDG index data. They found positive developments with notable synergies in some goals (i.e., SDGs 1, 3, 7, 8, 9), despite others presenting trade-offs (i.e., SDGs 11, 13). There are also other studies that analyzed these interlinkages from a qualitative perspective ( Singh et al., 2018 ; Fuso Nerini et al., 2019 ; Vinuesa et al., 2020 ). Particularly relevant for this study is that to date, there are no global studies on the interrelations among SDGs related to the research output of Higher Education Institutions to the best of our knowledge, a gap that this study intends to fill.

Development Goals and Their Relationship With Higher Education Institutions and Research Centers

As discussed above, MDGs and SDGs appeared as a result of the interest and commitment of governments of countries from all over the world toward sustainable development. As Caiado et al. (2018) stated, “The SDG agenda calls for a global partnership—at all levels—between all countries and stakeholders who need to work together to achieve the goals and targets, including a broad spectrum of actions such as multinational businesses, local governments, regional and international bodies, and civil societal organizations.” In this regard, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and Research Centers (RCs) should play an active and central role in promoting and participating in these new goals.

In the past, HEIs played a role in “transforming societies and serving the greater public good, so there is a societal need for universities to assume responsibility for contributing to sustainable development” ( Waas et al., 2010 ), and HEIs “should be leaders in the search for solutions and alternatives to current environmental problems and agents of change” ( Hesselbarth and Schaltegger, 2014 ). For Bizerril et al. (2018) , the knowledge of sustainability in HEIs should be encouraged worldwide and especially those located in regions with serious social and environmental challenges. In this sense, researchers must discuss how to cooperate and to share knowledge for a sustainable society, and HEIs could respond to sustainability through cooperation. According to Lozano et al. (2015) , HEIs (and in extension, RCs) could tackle sustainable development from the following initiatives: (1) Institutional frameworks (i.e., HEIs commitment with vision, missions, SD office…); (2) Campus operations related to the physical built environment (e.g., energy use and energy efficiency, waste, water and water management); (3) Education (e.g., courses on sustainable development); (4) Research (e.g., research centers, publications, research funding); (5) Outreach and collaboration (e.g., exchange programmes for students in the field of sustainable development); (6) Sustainable development through on-campus experiences; and (7) Assessment and reporting. Despite all these aspects, as Caeiro et al. (2013) study stated, only a few institutions follow a holistic implementation, in which sustainable development is applied in all traditional sustainability dimensions via its inclusion in social, economic, and environmental pillars.

The Role of Scientific Research in the Achievement of SDGs

Scientific research is one of the most relevant dimensions in the effective achievement of SDGs and Agenda 2030. According to Tatalović and Antony (2010) science did not factor strongly in the discussions on how to achieve MDGs goals. However, Leal Filho et al. (2017) see SDGs as an opportunity for scientific research to contribute to the achievement of the goals. For Leal Filho et al. (2018) , development goals are an opportunity to encourage sustainability research through interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. Several authors also support the important role of scientific research to achieve SDGs ( Wuelser and Pohl, 2016 ), namely as a way to solve concrete social problems, while sustainability science 5 could support the transition for sustainability. Yet, to our knowledge, no large-scale study has sought to investigate which SDGs are prioritized in the research by HEIs at a global level. The ambition of this study is precisely to fill this gap by providing a global mapping of research topics related to SDGs, identifying who the main contributing HEIs to this research are.

Scientometric Analyses of SDGs-Related Research Outputs From HEIs

Scientometrics is a research area focused on studying research activities (e.g., production, evolution, collaboration, impact, etc.) in order to understand the scientific dynamics across subject areas, institutions, or countries. Scientometric studies offer a powerful tool to generate global pictures of the research activities in a given area. There are different scientometric studies that previously analyzed sustainability, sustainable development or sustainability science based on a keyword search ( Nučič, 2012 ; Schoolman et al., 2012 ; Hassan et al., 2014 ; Kajikawa et al., 2014 ; Pulgarin et al., 2015 ; Ramírez Ríos et al., 2016 ; Olawumi and Chan, 2018 ). Some studies focused on analyzing the output of sustainability in higher education ( Bizerril et al., 2018 ; Veiga Ávila et al., 2018 ; Alejandro-Cruz et al., 2019 ; Hallinger and Chatpinyakoop, 2019 ). However, few studies have specifically analyzed scientific output on SDGs, probably due to the intrinsic difficulty in determining the contributions of science to SDGs ( Armitage et al., 2020 ).

Despite these difficulties, some studies have already tried to analyze the interrelations among SDGs ( Le Blanc, 2015 ; Griggs et al., 2017 ). Körfgen et al. (2018) analyzed the contribution of Austrian universities toward SDGs. Sweileh (2020) analyzed 18,696 publications from Scopus by searching the term “sustainable development goal.” Another study ( Nakamura et al., 2019 ), analyzed 2,800 publications (with an expansion to 10,300), developed topic maps from the publications identified. One of the authors of this paper had already carried out a preliminary scientometric study ( Bautista-Puig and Mauleón, 2019 ) by analyzing the core of scientific publications on MDGs and SDGs ( n = 4,532) in addition to the interrelations between different SDGs from a scientometric point of view. However, to the best of our knowledge, no previous study has approached a large-scale study of MDGs and SDGs relations from a scientometric point of view, considering the role of Higher Education Institutions and Research Centers in the production of research around MDGs and SDGs.

The development of these types of studies is paramount in order to assess and understand their potential limitations and robustness ( Rafols, 2020 ), particularly given the increasing number that are starting to use keyword-based scientometric queries, and machine learning approaches ( Pukelis et al., 2020 ) in order to map the contribution of research to the understanding of SDGs (e.g., Elsevier, OSDG tool, STRINGS Project, Dimensions, Aurora Project), and even their impact (e.g., Times Higher Education SDG Impact indicators). Thus, it is important that different methods and approaches are considered and discussed, particularly highlighting their advantages and limitations. This study aims at contributing also to this debate, as well as to provide scientometric evidence on the main research patterns around SDGs, that can help foster the debate on the role of universities to the SDGs goal.

The main purpose of this article is to produce a quantitative study of the scientific research on development goals during the period 2000–2017. Our ambition is 2-fold, on the one hand to propose a scientometric method based on citation relations that can be used to identify research conceptually related to MDGs and SDGs (henceforth M&SDGs), and on the other hand to identify and analyze the main institutions involved in the development of M&SDGs-related scientific outputs, as well as to characterize the main underlying topics related to M&SDGs research. The scientometric analysis was guided by three main research questions:

- RQ1: How can M&SDGs research can be scientometrically delineated and collected? This question focuses on applying an advanced citation-based approach to determine what M&SDG-related research is.

- RQ2. How has M&SDGs research carried out by HEIs has developed over time? This question seeks to characterize how the production of research outputs on M&SDGs has evolved over time, with a special focus on its main producers (institutions and countries). The unit of analysis of this study is on HEIs and RCs (hereafter HEIs). For the more specific definition of these terms used in this study, the reader is referred to Supplementary Material .

- RQ3: What are the specific M&SDGs research topics that have been studied by HEIs? This question identifies and characterizes the main research topics studied in the scientific literature produced by HEIs, with a special focus on the interrelations among the 17 SDGs based on the ad-hoc glossary developed by Bautista (2019) .

The rest of the article is organized as follows. The next section includes the methods section. This is followed by the results and discussions, providing answers to the research questions. Finally, the last section presents the main conclusions and suggestions for future research.

An important methodological difficulty with the definition of M&SDGs research is the discrepancy between what is research related to M&SDGs and what is research on M&SDGs . “ Research related to M&SDGs” comprises research that is related to concepts, issues or ideas related to the M&SDGs but without necessarily a direct linkage to the M&SDGs core (e.g., an institution doing research related to malaria prior to the official launch of the SDGs). “ Research on M&SDGs” comprises research directly focusing on the concepts, notions and principles of the M&SDGs (e.g., research directly mentioning “Sustainable Development Goal” or citing a paper that does it). In this work we partly incorporate both perspectives. Thus, we consider that a scientific publication is on the M&SDGs if it mentions either the concepts of MDG or SDGS (i.e., core research), or at a minimum cites, or is cited by, the core research. From a conceptual point of view it can be argued that our approach focuses on identifying research conceptually related to the “discourse of development goals,” and more specifically about how this topic has been constructed in the research by HEIs. With this citation-based approach we are providing a focused analysis on the scientific research that has a stronger cognitive 6 alignment with the M&SDGs philosophy and aims, thus avoiding the limitations of semantic approaches (e.g., based on keywords), in which different selections of keywords and terms are possible (and potentially questionable—see Rafols, 2020 ).

The following methodological steps were followed: (1) Formulation of a search strategy to identify the core M&SDGs literature; (2) Expansion of the dataset based on direct citations (cited and citing publications); (3) Data collection refining and information processing; and (4) Development of scientometric indicators.

(1) Formulation of a search strategy to identify the core M&SDGs literature

In the first step, we designed a search strategy composed by keywords that unambiguously relate to M&SDGs 7 . These keywords were searched in titles, abstracts, and keywords (author and paper keywords 8 ). The search strategy was run using the in-house CWTS WoS database (limited to publications from the years 2000–2017). A total of 4,685 publications were collected, and all publication types indexed in the Web of Science were considered. These are considered as the M&SDGs core set of publications.

(2) Expansion of the dataset based on direct citations (cited and citing publications)

Starting from the M&SDG core set of publications ( n = 4,685), the set of their direct citations (DC), considering both cited ( n = 59,180) and citing ( n = 74,859) publications were collected, 9 resulting in a final set of distinct publications referred to as M&SDGs Expansion ( n = 129,379).

(3) Data collection refining and affiliation information processing

In a following step, a total of 25,299 publications between 2000 and 2017 10 were selected, excluding 104,080 publications from years outside this period. These publications were further characterized, identifying those publications with at least one affiliation from HEIs ( Figure 1 ), thus conforming the final dataset of analysis, with 21,653 publications (85.59%). The harmonization of the affiliations was based in the in-house CWTS database ( Waltman et al., 2012 ).

Figure 1 . Methodological workflow for delineating M&SDGs on this study and creating the final dataset.

(4) Development of scientometric indicators & analytics

The following indicators were analyzed for the final dataset:

(i) Research patterns

- Yearly trend in scientific output in M&SDGs overall and by these institutions. A trend analysis of 6-year blocks is considered.

- Cumulative Average Growth Rate (CAGR) . The formula is the following:

Where X 1 and X n are the values found for the first and last periods studied. The expression is equivalent to the compound average growth rate (CAGR) often used in finance to measure mean growth across a time series.

- Output by institutions and countries : Absolute values and “ Activity Index ” (AI) of their M&SDGs research ( Supplementary Equation 1 ). The AI was proposed by Frame (1977) and it is used to analyze the degree of relative specialization of an actor (institution or country) in a research field. The indicator represents the percentage contribution of each country to the total WoS production, compared to the percentage of contribution in the analyzed topic. ArcGis software was used for creating the maps.

(ii) Subject specialization.

- Co-occurrence map 11 based on keywords using the VOSviewer tool 12 to identify thematic clusters within the scientific landscape. Regarding the clustering, VOSviewer applies its own algorithm based on modularity optimization ( Van Eck and Waltman, 2017 ). Table 1 summarizes the indicators analyzed.

Table 1 . List of indicators analyzed for the co-occurrence maps.

- Keywords “burst citation.” Burst is a concept associated with a change of a variable's value in a relatively short time. Those sudden increases in the usage frequency of keywords (i.e., burst strength) in order to determine the hotness of a topic were identified using Kleinberg's algorithm ( Kleinberg, 2003 ). This value is not normalized, but the ranking order and the duration of the burst are rather relevant for its interpretation.

- Scientific production classification into the SDGs . In order to study the semantic relations between the different SDGs (in terms of SDGs sharing similar keywords across publications), the individual publications were classified in accordance with the different SDGs. To classify the publications into individual SDGS, an ad-hoc ontology ( Bautista, 2019 ) with 4,122 terms has been applied. Publications were classified in different individual SDGs based on the linkage between the keywords in the publications and the ontology, allowing publications to be classified in more than one SDG when their keywords would point to different SDGs. A total of 20,749 (82.01%) publications were finally classified in at least one of the 17 SDGs. This includes keywords related to each SDG based on the United Nations-Description (e.g., “poverty” was classified into “SDG1-No poverty,” “sanitation” into “SDG6- clean water and sanitation”), 13 as well as a manual-supervision of the keywords located as the core and its consequent extension.

In this section the main results of the paper are presented in relationship to the main research questions formulated above.

Research Output and Main Actors

This section analyses the M&SDGs-related research output collected, as well as the main actors producing it and their specialization. Figure 2 presents the evolution of the scientific output of development goals produced. The scientific evolution shows a growing tendency, with an overall growth of 828.65% over the period and a CAGR of 14.01%. Since the launch of the SDGs in 2015, there has been a strong concentration of the M&SDGs research output, with more than 31.6% of the overall output published since the launch of the SDGs in 2015 (until 2017).

Figure 2 . Yearly output of the scientific production of organizations (2000–2017).

A total of 1,968 organizations were identified in the affiliations of these publications. The most productive institution was the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, with 1,963 publications (9.07%), followed by the World Health Organization (WHO), with 1,675 (7.74%), Johns Hopkins University with 1,324 (6.11%) and Harvard University with 1,079 (4.98%). However, when looking at the 6-year blocs as in Supplementary Table 1 , different tendencies are shown over time. In the first 6-year (2000–2005) sample, the number of publications was 2,330 produced by 660 organizations identified. The most productive organizations in this period were the WHO, with 292 publications (12.53%), followed by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine with 272 (11.67%) and the Johns Hopkins University with 157 (6.74%). In the second period (2006–2011), a total of 6,671 publications were produced by 1,244 organizations. During this period, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine led the ranking with 682 publications (10.22%), followed by the WHO with 580 (8.69%) and the Johns Hopkins University with 439 (6.58%). In the third period (2012–2017), a total of 12,652 publications, produced by 1,744 organizations, were identified. The same ranking of organizations as in the previous period is also found: The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine leads with 1,009 publications (7.98%), followed by the WHO with 803 publications (6.35%) and the Johns Hopkins University with 728 (5.75%). Among the more productive HEIs there are only five institutions from developing countries: two form South Africa (the University of Cape Town and the University of the Witwatersrand), one from Uganda (Makerere University), one from Pakistan (Aga Khan University), and one from Brazil (the Federal University of Pelotas).

Figure 3 shows a scatter plot of the relation between the institutions with a higher scientific production on SDGs [P(M&SDGs)] and their AI around research on this topic [AI(M&SDG)]. The size of the bubbles indicates the number of publications in WoS of each institution (only institutions with more than 50 are included in the Figure). Overall, the most productive institutions present a lower AI (e.g., the Johns Hopkins University and Harvard University with P(M&SDG) = 1,324 publications and P(M&SDG) = 1,024, respectively, have an AI of 8.70 and 3.89, respectively). The WHO [P(M&SDG) = 1,675] and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine [P(M&SDG)= 1,963] present a high AI of more than 88% each. Among the institutions with the larges AI values we find other institutions such as the Stockholm Environment Institute (AI 190.47), Aga Khan University (AI 141.06), or the International Center for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (AI 132.55) ( Figure 3 ).

Figure 3 . Scatter plot of the Top 20 organizations ranked by AI (with more than 50 docs.).

A map is drawn in order to show the geographical distribution of M&SDGs publications ( Figure 4 ). The most productive countries during the whole period were the United States (8,473 publications, 39.13%), followed by the United Kingdom (6,053 publications, 27.95%), Switzerland (2,232 publications, 10.31%), Australia (1,959 publications, 9.05%), and Canada (1,757 publications, 8.11%). By periods, in the first one (2000–2005) a total of 67 countries produced at least one publication on M&SDGs research increasing to 86 countries in the second period, and to 95 countries in the third period, with the same set of countries mentioned above as the most productive in each period ( Figure 4 ). From the point of view of the specialization (measured by the AI), African and Asian countries exhibit a stronger specialization in M&SDGs research compared to countries from other regions. Uganda is leading the specialization in the whole period (29 publications and AI of 24% in the first period: 107 and AI 32.60 in the second period and 265 publications and AI of 43.130 in the third period). Supplementary Table 2 provides information on 6-year blocs to see differences over time. Apart from Uganda, other African countries (Tanzania, South-Africa, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Rwanda, Mozambique, or Ethiopia) stand out in specialization. Besides, other countries from Asia (Bangladesh, Pakistan), or Europe (Switzerland) present a higher AI on the topic.

Figure 4 . Geographic distribution of scientific publications and AI (countries with >20 publications).

Keyword Co-occurrence Analysis

To reveal the main topics of the M&SDGs research, Figure 5 shows a keyword co-occurrence-based clustering. The parameters for creating the maps are detailed below: LingLog Modularity normalization method, 566 items; link of 65,446; link strength of 298,485; and repulsion, resolution and minimum cluster size with a value of 1 14 . Keywords (nodes) in VOSViewer maps are located in such a way that the distance between them is related to their co-occurrence frequency. Terms located closely in the map means that they tend to appear together in the titles and abstracts of the papers, and therefore it can be argued that they are thematically connected. The following five clusters were identified: Cluster #1, with terms related to the millennium development goals inheritance and policy framework; Cluster #2 with terms about maternal mortality and care; Cluster #3 with terms related to the health systems (“diagnosis,” “treatment”); Cluster #4 with terms about the African health ecosystem, and Cluster #5 including terms related to the developing countries' landscape (health, community, water, and so on). Table 2 summarizes the main information of each cluster (number of nodes, core papers, average year, average links, and the most frequent keywords). It can be observed that cluster 1 is the largest in terms of publications, followed by cluster 2. The number of links per paper (#link avg ) is higher in cluster #2 and cluster #3, both related to health issues, suggesting a stronger connection between these two clusters. In most clusters, the average year (#year avg ) is 2012, suggesting that an important share of the output has been developed in the most recent years of study, which is backed up by the growing M&SDGs output over time discussed above. The percentage of core publications (i.e., directly referring to M&SDGs) for each cluster is indicated in the column “% core papers,” showing that clusters #1 and #2 (with 45.40 and 37.55% of core publications, respectively), are clusters with a stronger conceptual proximity with the M&SDGs core ideas and aims, while the other clusters have a more indirect relationship with these core ideas.

Figure 5 . Co-occurrence map (frequency of, at least, 50 keywords) of scientific research.

Table 2 . Summary of five thematic clusters.

Keyword Burst Analysis

In this section, burst detection for keywords in M&SDGs publications is performed in order to show what terms have more rapidly increased attention in citations accumulation. We have identified at least 60 different bursting keywords during the period. Supplementary Table 3 lists the 60 keywords with the strongest citation bursts, along with their strength and time span. The term “middle income country” has the strongest citation burst with a burst strength of 75.13, followed by “tuberculosis” with 66.52 and “maternal health” with 64.98. Some keywords have only been “bursting” at the very beginning of the period (e.g., “low birth weight,” 2000–2003; “economic growth,” 2000–2001; and “rural Bangladesh,” 2000–2001). However, in more recent years, strongly bursting citation keywords include “new-born” (16.65, time span of 2015–2017), “middle income country” (75.13, 2014–2017), “maternal health” (64.98, 2014–2017), and “delivery” (36.38, 2014–2017).

Individual SDGs Analysis

Publication prevalence.

The following SDGs were most prevalently represented in the publications ( Supplementary Figure 1 ): SDG3 “Good Health and well-being,” with 15,963 papers (76.93%); followed by SDG16 “Peace, justice and strong institutions,” with 11,658 (56.19%); SDG11 “Sustainable cities and communities,” with 9,541 publications (45.98%); and SDG10: “Reduce inequalities,” with 6,115 publications (29.47%). On the other hand, the least represented SDGs are: SDG 12 “Responsible production and consumption,” 939 papers (4.51%); and SDG7 “Affordable and clean energy,” with 1,095 (5.26%).

Geographic Distribution

Figure 6 shows two different perspectives on the production of publications across continents related to their contribution to the research of each individual SDG. In Figure 6A , the contribution of each continent to each SDGs is presented (reading row-wise); while the table on the right depicts the share of each continent across the different individual SDGs (reading column-wise). Publications are assigned to each continent based on the affiliation of the first-author of the paper. The results of the left table show that all goals have higher production in Europe and North America. Considering all M&SDGs research, it can be observed that in Europe the largest percentage of output is in SDG13 “Climate action” (46.23%), followed by SDG12 “Responsible Production” (44.85%) and SDG15 “Life on Land” (44.28%). In America, the largest is SDG2 “Zero Hunger” (37.60%), followed by SDG5 “Gender Equality” (15.50%), and SDG3 “Good Health” (13.32%). In Africa, the highest production is in SDG5 “Gender Equality” (15.50%); SDG4 “Quality Education” (14.27%); and SDG11 “Sustainable cities” (13.73%). In Asia, the greatest output is in SDG17 “Partnership for the goals:” (13.97%); SDG4 “Quality Education:” (13.33%); and SDG5 “Gender Equality” (13.31%). Finally, in Oceania, the higher production of these institutions is in SDG13 “Climate Action” (8.47%); SDG12 “Responsible Production and consumption” (7.24%); and SDG15 “Life on Land” (6.81%). From a global perspective, if we consider the distribution of the publications on each goal by continent to determine their profile ( Figure 6B ), the approach of the different SDGs exhibit more similar patterns, although some SDGs—such as SDG3 “Good Health,” SDG16 “Peace, Justice,” and SDG10 “Reducing Inequalities”—stand out from the others.

Figure 6 . Contribution of each continent to each SDGs (A) and profile by continent (B) .

Cognitive Relationships

Although the interlinked nature of SDGs has been stressed, their interactions are “not explicit in the description of the goals” ( Griggs et al., 2017 ). For instance, SDG11 “Sustainable Cities,” contains targets related to economic dimensions (e.g., financial and technical assistance for developed countries, expenditure on the conservation of cultural and natural heritage), social dimensions (e.g., number of deaths per disaster and urban population living in slums), or environmental dimensions (e.g., reducing the adverse environmental impact of cities per capita, or the proportion of urban solid waste), and these three could be conceptually linked to other SDGs, for example SDG6 “Clean Water.” In our study, to reveal their cognitive relations (measured via citations), a co-citation map has been created. The proximity between SDGs indicates their similarity in terms of co-citation occurrence (i.e., publications from the two SDGs appear often cited together in the same set of publications). The size of the nodes reflects the frequency of SDGs in terms of overall publications, and the thickness of the edges denotes how often these SDGs are co-cited. Figure 7A shows the SDGs map of the M&SDGs research. The following clusters of SDGs are identified:

Figure 7 . Co-citation occurrence map of (A) M&SDGs research, and (B) average publication year.

Cluster 1 (red) is formed by SDGs with a strong industrial and energy orientation [SDG6 ‘Clean Water’, SDG7 ‘Clean Energy’, and SDG9 ‘Industry, Innovation’] and the environment (SDG15 ‘Life on Land’, and SDG14 ‘Life below Water’). Cluster 2 (blue) groups; SDG1 “No Poverty,” and SDG2 “Zero Hunger,” being two of the most important SDGs inheritance of MDGs. SDG1 is directly and indirectly related to all other SDGs, but dependent on SDG2 International Council for Science, 2015 ].

Cluster 3 (yellow) includes SDG10 “Reduced Inequalities,” and SDG17 “Partnership for the Goals,” linking the reduction of inequalities and partnership.

Cluster 4 (green) is composed by SDGs related with health, urbanization and peace: SDG3; “Good health;” SDG4 “Quality Education;” SDG 5 “Gender Equality;” SDG11 “Sustainable Cities;” and SDG16 “Peace, Justice.” For instance, SDG11 “Sustainable Cities” and SDG3 “Good Health” have a strong connection (link strength of 5,154).

Cluster 5 (purple) is composed only by SDG8 “Decent work.” However, this goal has links with SDG9 “Industry, Innovation” and SDG11 “Sustainable Cities,” or SDG3 “Good Health,” among others.

Figure 7B depicts the evolution of the SDG in each cluster from the average publication year (2011–2012). The more yellow indicates the more recent the publications. It can be observed how SDG3 “Good Health,” SDG8 “Decent Work,” SDG16 “Peace, Justice”, and SDG11 “Sustainable Cities” have had research output from earlier years, as compared to the other SDGs. From another perspective, SDGs with a stronger recentness in scientific output include SDG17 “Partnership for the Goals,” SDG10 “Reduced Inequalities,” SDG5 “Gender Equality,” and SDG4 “Quality Education,” indicate that awareness of areas related to education or gender are of a more recent nature.

The proposal of the different SDGs in 2005 together with Agenda 2030 has led to the creation of a path of collective national and international awareness toward sustainability. One of the main features of SDGs is their increasing relevance not only for policy makers, who are encouraging sustainability-oriented policies, but also for the scientific community as a whole ( Kajikawa et al., 2007 ; Sweileh, 2020 ). This study presents an empirical scientometric analysis of M&SDGs research, and the role of HEIs in its development. As stated in the literature review, few studies have focused on analyzing the research output of SDGs, and even fewer have focused on the role of the organizations developing such research. Thus, this paper contributes to the debate around the incorporation of the M&SDGs in the research agenda of HEIs by providing an overview of output in the area, and by proposing a practical methodology approach to delineate this area in bibliometric databases.

How Can M&SDGs-Research Be Scientometrically Delineated and Collected?

A well-delineated methodology is crucial to identify the research publications on a specific topic. In this study, we propose a citation-based methodology to track and monitor M&SDGs-related research. The application of our methodology retrieved a total of 25,299 publications, which identifies a much larger set of publications of M&SDGs at HEIs than in similar previous studies ( Bizerril et al., 2018 ; Veiga Ávila et al., 2018 ; Hallinger and Chatpinyakoop, 2019 ). The study by Nakamura et al. (2019) used a very similar methodology as the one presented here, however we identified a larger set of publications related to M&SDGs (4,685 in the core and 25,299 in total in the present study vs. the 2,800 in the core and 10,300 total in Nakamura study). The main reason for this difference is that in the present study the MDGs were also considered, as well as the fact that the CWTS WoS version has a more efficient citation matching algorithm than the one in WoS ( Olensky et al., 2016 ). The citation-based approach of this study, as well as in Nakamura et al. (2019) , offers some advantages in comparison with previous studies that applied keyword-based approaches ( Kajikawa et al., 2007 ; Elsevier Research Intelligence, 2015 ). For instance, it offers a systematic approach that can easily be reproduced and can be applied to any other database that records citation linkages among publications (e.g., Web of Science, Scopus, Microsoft Academic Graph, Dimensions, Crossref Open Citations, etc.), making possible the replication of this approach in future studies. Another important advantage of our approach is that it focuses on identifying publications that are cognitively related to M&SDGs, since the selected publications have cited/are citing relationships with the core literature on M&SDGs, thus avoiding the problem of delineating M&SDGs-related research using keywords. Keyword-based approaches would typically identify as SDGs-related research publications that only have a circumstantial relationships with SDGs, but that are not totally related to them (e.g., publications related to “economic growth,” but not in the philosophy underlying the M&SDGs—i.e., sustainable economic growth). Finally, the method developed here has the advantage that it captures the M&SDGs research output at the global level, thus providing an international perspective on the discussion around the study of the research activity on M&SDGs. However, in future studies other more local perspectives (e.g., the study of publications in local languages, local publishers) should be also explored.

How Has M&SDGs Research Carried Out by HEIs Developed Over Time?

The results presented in this study suggest that although one may presume that M&SDGs research would have a long tradition since the launch of the MDGs, there is an important concentration of publications in the most recent years, denoting a more recent interest in the SDGs (21.83% in 2000–2014, the MDGs period vs. 31.66% from 2015 to 2017 since the launch of the SDGs). However, we should take into consideration that by using WoS there is a strong bias toward English-language journals and might have distorted the results. In any case, this recency trend in the production of M&SDGs-related research is in line with the results obtained by Olawumi and Chan (2018) who observed that the scientific output on sustainable development, 2015–2016, represents 36.27% (vs. 21.42% on M&SDGs in the present study). There have also been previous publications discussing the growth of the scientific production related with sustainability. For example, Pulgarin et al. (2015) argued that the growth of research production in sustainability can be explained by “the impact of human activity on the environment” which “is leading to this area of research [sustainability] being studied from ever more different fields.” Olawumi and Chan (2018) consider that this increase could be also linked to “more efforts and resources” being devoted to this topic. For Nučič (2012) , the increasing growth of the scientific output could be associated with “sustainability science as a highly interdisciplinary research field.” This is in line with Schoolman et al. (2012) , who indicated that “sustainability research is more interdisciplinary than other scientific research” (based on the Shannon entropy measure), supporting the suggestion by Nakamura et al. (2019) that SDGs research is based on “transdisciplinary knowledge” between different fields, arguing that “most scientific disciplines are expected to contribute toward sustainability since in sustainability we have complex structures, including environmental, technological, societal, and economic facets” ( Kajikawa et al., 2014 ).

In previous studies on M&SDGs the role of these institutions has not been specifically analyzed (e.g., in Nakamura et al., 2019 ). Institutions like the London School of Hygiene, the WHO, and the Johns Hopkins University stand out among the most productive institutions. Their predominant role can be explained by their relatively large sizes; however, their AI confirms that these institutions are also highly specialized on this topic too. The London School of Hygiene belongs to the University of London and is specialized in public health and tropical medicine; while the WHO is a specialized agency of the United Nations focused on international public health. As well, London School of Hygiene have focused recently on health systems' strengthening (HSS) ( Seidman, 2017 ). The predominant role in output and specialization of the WHO, which is not a HEI or a RC but a supra-governmental organization that provides statistics for monitoring health-related aspects of the SDGs, 15 may be also seen as a sign of the strong social and political relevance of M&SDGs research.

Some other organizations that, although smaller in terms of output, have a high degree of specialization are the Stockholm Environment Institute (AI 191.47), the Aga Khan University (AI 141.06), or the International Center for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (AI 132.55). This relative importance of small organizations goes in line with Nakamura's et al. (2019) results, who suggested that not always the largest institutions “set the agenda” in M&SDGs research, but that smaller ones also could be key players (e.g., Stockholm Environment Institute, and the University of London).

This study confirms the observation by Yarime et al. (2010) of an increasing number of countries engaged in research on sustainability. Our results also resonate with studies like that of Adomßent et al. (2014) , who also stated that the HEIs' sustainability research is mostly produced by authors from developed countries such as the USA, the United Kingdom, Australia, or Canada. However, in terms of relative specialization, our study shows that African and Asian countries exhibit a much stronger specialization. A special case is South Africa. This country is the sixth country in number of M&SDGs publications, and one of its universities (i.e., University of Cape Town) is the most prolific African institution in M&SDGs research. This strong relevance of SDGs research in South African can be reinforced by the fact that “South Africa” is a topic in the M&SDGs research map since the name of the country appears as a node in the term co-occurrence map. Although our scientometric evidence is not strong enough to conclude that the higher performance of this country in M&SDGs is the direct effect of policies aimed at encouraging research on M&SDGs, it must be highlighted that the country counts with South Africa's National Development Plan (NDP), which defines national development priorities and provides the foundations for South Africa in order to achieve the SDGs ( Cumming et al., 2017 ).

What Are the Specific M&SDGs Research Topics That Have Been Studied by HEIs?

The SDGs more frequently addressed by HEIs are SDG3 “Good Health” (76.93% of the publications), SDG16 “Peace, Justice” (56.19%), SDG11 “Sustainable Cities” (45.98%) and SDG10 “Reduced inequalities” (29.47%), which is in line with the higher percentage of overall HEIs involved on this research ( Supplementary Table 4 ). Our results contrast with the results obtained by Salvia et al. (2019) , who surveyed research experts in SDGs across continents, highlighting the following SDGs as having more activity: SDG 13 “Climate Action” (41%), SDG 11 “Sustainable Cities” (33%), and SDG 4 “Quality Education” (29%). This remarkable difference between a qualitative approach (i.e., surveys sent to experts in Salvia et al., 2019 ) and our quantitative approach, reinforces the importance of considering and combining different methodologies in the study of how science is contributing to the achievement of SDGs, and how academic stakeholders are approaching the different SDGs.

Regarding the interconnection of SDGs, according to Nilsson et al. (2016) , SDGs are more interconnected among themselves than its predecessors, the MDGs. This idea of SDGs interconnecting among themselves is supported by their consideration as “enablers for integration,” which means that the internal structures of the different SDGs is conceived to fit across more different SDGs ( Le Blanc, 2015 ), thus enabling their own integration and interconnection. This integrative and interconnected property of SDGs is observed in this study, since all goals have connections among them, being particularly remarkable the connections between the following three pairs, which presented a higher co-occurrence values: SDG16 “Peace, Justice” vs. SDG13 “Climate Action;” SDG3 “Good Health” vs. SDG11 “Sustainable Cities;” and SDG16 “Peace, Justice” vs. SDG11 “Sustainable Cities.” Moreover, the linkage between the pairs responds to complementary relationships. For instance, SDG3 “Good Health” and SDG11 “Sustainable Cities,” linking health with cities could be understood as housing, transport, and access to green spaces are major determinants of health and well-being ( International Council for Science, 2015 ).

As mentioned above, SDG3 “Good Health” is the most researched SDG identified in our study. This is not a surprise since this goal has a central role in the achievement of sustainable development ( Pettigrew et al., 2015 ), and Biomedical Research is one of the largest research areas covered in Web of Science ( Mongeon and Paul-Hus, 2016 ). In any case, our results are in agreement with ( Körfgen et al., 2018 ; Sweileh, 2020 ), and as pointed out by previous studies, SDG3 “Good Health” was found to have a higher share of synergies with other SDGs in most countries ( Pradhan et al., 2017 ). The MDGs, experience has shown that without improvements in health systems performance, progress on the goals was both limited and potentially unsustainable ( Seidman, 2017 ). This may explain why this specific health-related goal (SDG3) became more ambitious and central than in the MDGs ( Seidman, 2017 ; Asi and Williams, 2018 ). It is important to highlight that one the major efforts of SDG3 has been to reduce mortality across population groups (e.g., “the poor” or “women and children”) ( Buse and Hawkes, 2015 ), thus explaining the central role of “good health” in the map of topics presented in this study. However, from our data, there is no empirical evidence suggesting why health is the goal most researched.

Conclusions

Based on an advanced citation-based field delineation, this paper provides an extensive analysis of M&SDGs research over time and contributes to contextualize and understand its trajectory. The results of this study are relevant for planners and decision-makers in HEIs. First, this paper presents a new delineation procedure for M&SDGs-related research. The methodology is simple and reproducible, allowing its application in future studies for researchers, as well as its implementation in other citation databases (e.g., Scopus, Dimensions, Microsoft Academic Graph, etc.). Second, our work contributes to the expansion of the toolset of research instruments aimed at evaluating the development of research around M&SDGs. We provide a relevant proof of concept on how scientometric methodologies can support the monitoring of the research developed to support the achievement of M&SDGs. The approach proposed in this paper has relevance for all stakeholders engaged in the development of research activities related to M&SDGs (e.g., HEIs, RCs, governmental and supranational organizations, NGOs, and any stakeholder interested in SDGs). Developing reproducible methodologies (as done in this paper) and establishing a stable analytical monitoring framework is fundamental for a proper understanding of how science is contributing to the achievement of SDGs. However, it is important, not only to analyze the number of papers, but also the contribution itself of those papers with the goals, targets, and indicators.

From a scientometric point of view, this study provides a novel contribution to the scientometric analysis on SDGs research output, particularly since most scientometric studies have focused on developing semantic approaches, in which the use of keywords has been the most common approximation to the topic ( Pukelis et al., 2020 ; Rafols, 2020 ). We adopt a citation-based approach. This approach does not suffer from the ambiguity of semantic approaches (e.g., synonymy, homonymy), and more fundamentally, our approach does not hold the limitation that keyword-based approaches may capture research that is not necessarily aligned with the principles and philosophical foundations of M&SDGs. Grounded on the idea that citations represent concept symbols ( Small, 1978 ), in which scientific authors associate ideas by creating symbolic acts with their citations (see also Haustein et al., 2016 ), it can be argued that our approach captures the body of scientific literature most conceptually related with M&SDGs. To the best of our knowledge, only the Nakamura et al. (2019) study and this one have adopted such a citation-based approach, with this study being the most comprehensive to-date in the body of literature analyzed.

It is important however to remark that our citation-based approach still presents some limitations that must be observed when generalizing its findings. By considering only the Web of Science (WoS) database the study may have limitations due to the underrepresentation of other related published works, which may be indexed in other scientometric databases (e.g., Scopus, Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic…). Also, WoS does not cover all academic fields equally as it presents an underrepresentation of non-English speaking studies. The methodology proposed may not necessarily capture the whole picture of research related to M&SDGs. The sole use of direct citations related to a core set of publications may also be insufficient at times, since many publications genuinely linked to M&SDGs research may be more distanced in their citation relationship with the core set. In addition, despite all types of publications from WoS being included, some other typologies of interest (e.g., governmental reports) are not captured.

Considering the methodological limitations described above, future methodological improvements should take into account the possibility of characterizing not only the directly cited/citing publications of M&SDGs, but also other citation layers (e.g., 2nd, 3 rd , or more—also known as citation cascades — Min et al., 2020 ) in the expansion of the core set of publications. The use of citation cascades would allow the introduction of a more fluid approach (in which a much larger set of scientific publications may be considered regarding their citation proximity to the core set), in contrast with the binary approach (i.e., publication are M&SDGs-related or not) used in this study. Moreover, since this is the first study that has approached the scientific output from MDGs and SDGs together, we cannot assess whether other scientometric approaches or delineations would have delivered other results, therefore this is an aspect to be considered in future studies. Moreover, future studies on the topic might be complemented by means of qualitative research methods to uncover more specific motivations and drivers for research on SDGs in different contexts. The combination of scientometric indicators with other monitoring indicators (e.g., the SDG index) should also be considered. Such combination of methods will enable more advanced insights on the relationship between the research production of countries (as done in this study) and their success in their actual achievement of the specific SDGs, thus providing a more holistic perspective on how research can complement and support the consecution of Agenda 2030.

Data Availability Statement

The datasets presented in this study can be found in online repositories. The names of the repository/repositories and accession number(s) can be found at: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.11106113.v1 .

Author Contributions

NB-P: conceptualization, data curation, software, visualization, formal analysis, and writing- original draft preparation. AA: investigation, and writing—review and editing. SL and UA: writing—review and editing. RC: conceptualization, investigation, methodology, resources, software, validation, supervision, and writing—review and editing. All authors: contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

This work was partly supported by the Department of Science and Innovation and the National Research Foundation of South Africa.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frsus.2021.620743/full#supplementary-material

1. ^ Sustainable development was defined as a “kind of development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” ( United Nations, 1987 ).

2. ^ Information on the MDGs available at the following link: https://www.who.int/topics/millennium_development_goals/about/en/ (accessed December 30, 2019).

3. ^ SDG Index available at: http://sdgindex.org/ (accessed December 30, 2019).

4. ^ There was no public consultation, as with the SDGs.

5. ^ Sustainability science is a new scientific field that investigates “complex and dynamic interactions between natural and human systems and aims “to bridge the gap between science and society and limit its knowledge to actions for sustainability” ( Disterheft et al., 2013 ).

6. ^ From a theoretical point of view, we build on the notion of citations as “concept symbols” ( Small, 1978 ) in which any publication cited by or citing M&SDGs core publications can considered to have a cognitive association with M&SDGs research.

7. ^ The search strategy was composed of the following parameters: TS = “Millennium Development Goal * ” OR TS = “Millennium Goal * ” OR TS = “Sustainable Development Goal * ”.

8. ^ Web of Science divides between author keywords (included in records of articles and determined by the authors) and keywords plus or “paper authors” (index terms automatically generated from the titles of cited articles).

9. ^ The approach used in this study (identification of a seed of papers, and expansion based on citation relationships) has been used in previous studies (see Reijnhoudt et al., 2014 ).

10. ^ The period corresponds with the launch of the MDGs in 2000.

11. ^ Co-citation is defined as the frequency with which two publications are cited together by other publications.

12. ^ VOSviewer is a software tool for constructing and visualizing bibliometric networks. These networks may include nodes of journals, researchers, or individual publications, and they can be constructed based on citation, bibliographic coupling, co-citation, or co-authorship relations. Additionally, it offers text mining functionality that can be used to construct and visualize co-occurrence networks of terms extracted from a research dataset ( https://www.vosviewer.com/ —accessed December 30, 2019).

13. ^ Information available at: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/ (accessed December 30, 2019).

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15. ^ Information available at: https://www.who.int/sdg/en/ .

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Keywords: sustainable development goals, millennium development goals, higher education institutions, sustainability science, bibliometrics, scientometrics

Citation: Bautista-Puig N, Aleixo AM, Leal S, Azeiteiro U and Costas R (2021) Unveiling the Research Landscape of Sustainable Development Goals and Their Inclusion in Higher Education Institutions and Research Centers: Major Trends in 2000–2017. Front. Sustain. 2:620743. doi: 10.3389/frsus.2021.620743

Received: 23 October 2020; Accepted: 01 March 2021; Published: 25 March 2021.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2021 Bautista-Puig, Aleixo, Leal, Azeiteiro and Costas. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Núria Bautista-Puig, nuria.bautista.puig@hig.se

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Article Contents

Introduction, sources of data, areas of agreement, areas of controversy, growing points, areas timely for developing research, conflict of interest statement.

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Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and their implementation: A national global framework for health, development and equity needs a systems approach at every level

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Stephen Morton, David Pencheon, Neil Squires, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and their implementation: A national global framework for health, development and equity needs a systems approach at every level, British Medical Bulletin , Volume 124, Issue 1, December 2017, Pages 81–90, https://doi.org/10.1093/bmb/ldx031

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The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a set of global goals for fair and sustainable health at every level: from planetary biosphere to local community. The aim is to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity, now and in the future.

The UN has established web-sites to inform the implementation of the SDGs and an Inter-Agency and Expert Group on an Indicator Framework. We have searched for independent commentaries and analysis.

The goals represent a framework that is scientifically robust, and widely intuitive intended to build upon the progress established by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). There is a need for system wide strategic planning to integrate the economic, social and environmental dimensions into policy and actions.

Many countries have yet to understand the difference between the MDGs and the SDGs, particularly their universality, the huge potential of new data methods to help with their implementation, and the systems thinking that is needed to deliver the vision. The danger is that individual goals may be prioritized without an understanding of the potential positive interactions between goals.

There is an increasing understanding that sustainable development needs a paradigm shift in our understanding of the interaction between the real economy and quality of life. There would be many social, environmental and economic benefits in changing our current model.

We need to develop systems wide understanding of what supports a healthy environment and the art and science of making change.

Summary of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, linked to the five Areas of Critical Importance (5P’s)

Examples of targets and indicators (for Goal 2) 26

UN Graphical Illustration of the 17 SDGs.

The Sustainable Development Goals (adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015) run from 2016 to 2030 and are formally the goals of the United Nations’ ‘Transforming our world; the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’, an agenda which sets out the vision, principles and commitments to a fairer and more sustainable world for all. The practical and political importance of the SDGs, and the challenges associated with them, can only truly be appreciated by understanding what preceded them. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were in place from 2000 to 2015 and consisted of eight international development goals. The first three goals covered poverty, education and gender equality; the next three goals addressed ‘health outcomes’ covering child mortality, maternal health and ‘HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases’. The remaining two goals addressed environmental sustainability and global partnership for development. These eight MDGs were supported by a total of 21 individual targets.

The MDGs, although a move in the right direction, were subject to certain criticisms. One was that there was insufficient analysis to justify why these goals were selected as priorities and insufficient information available to be able to compare performance, especially in tackling inequalities within countries. 1 This highlighted the perennial challenge in such initiatives of balancing political consensus with scientific validity. Nevertheless, based on data compiled by the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on MDG indicators, 2 the UN could demonstrate considerable success on some goals, especially on reducing extreme poverty (numbers of people living on less than $1.25 per day), reducing both child and maternal mortality, increasing access for people living with HIV to antiretroviral treatment and reducing new HIV infections. However, the report recognized that ‘progress has been uneven across regions and countries’ in the implementation of the MDGs.

Perhaps most importantly, the Millennium Development Goals focussed primarily on the needs of developing countries reinforcing a binary view of rich and poorer countries, of donors and recipients and implying that the global challenge is a problem of development which international aid can help address, rather than a set of shared problems which only collective action globally can resolve.

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with 169 targets are broader in scope and go further than the MDGs by addressing the root causes of poverty and the universal need for development that works for all people. The goals cover the three dimensions of sustainable development: economic growth, social inclusion and environmental protection.

Building on the success and momentum of the MDGs, the new global goals cover more ground, with ambitions to address inequalities, economic growth, decent jobs, cities and human settlements, industrialization, oceans, ecosystems, energy, climate change, sustainable consumption and production, peace and justice.

The new Goals are universal and apply to all countries, whereas the MDGs were intended for action in developing countries only.

A core feature of the SDGs is their strong focus on means of implementation: the mobilization of financial resources; capacity-building and technology; as well as data and institutions.

The new Goals recognize that tackling climate change is essential for sustainable development and poverty eradication. SDG 13 aims to promote urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.

The UN resolution refers to five ‘areas of critical importance’; sometimes known as the 5 ‘P’s, these are People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace and Partnerships (see Table 1 ). The goals were launched with the strap-line of ‘Ensuring that no-one is left behind’ with its implication that development and levelling up will be the keys to progress by 2030. How this aspiration is reconciled with maintaining ecosystems and tackling climate change will be a challenge in itself. However, the SDGs do have a clear goal on climate action (Goal 13), which has been strengthened subsequently by the Paris Agreement of the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). However, the SDGs are voluntary commitments by governments in contrast to the formal Paris Agreement which is legally binding now that it has been signed by 55% of parties and that those who have signed are responsible for more than 55% of greenhouse gas emissions. Also adopted in March 2015, and with a similar timescale, was the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015–30) which succeeded the Hyogo Framework for Action (2005–15); the Sendai Framework was agreed by 187 countries and was endorsed by the UN General Assembly in June 2015.

There is a wealth of published material on sustainable development in general and on the SDGs in particular from the UN, from international non-governmental organizations, and from many other concerned and committed organizations and individuals more locally. It is easy to get lost in all of this so we have been selective in the sources we have used. Most importantly, there is a widely held view that much more innovative ways to both collecting data and using data, from crowd sourcing to the use of big data, need to be used if the mechanisms for implementing and delivering the SDGs are to take full advantage of the data revolution.

There is a dedicated United Nations website on sustainable development ( http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/ ) as well as a sustainable development knowledge platform ( https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/ ) with updates on the High Level Political Forum, on individual topics and milestones, and a directory of resources including recent publications. Both sites have much supporting material on the SDGs and also on the challenge of integrating the three dimensions of sustainable development (economic, social and environmental).

The formal resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly in September 2015 was published on 21 October 2015. 3 In the same year the United Nations Statistical Commission created an Inter-Agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators (IAEG-SDGs), which will coordinate proposals of a global indicator framework. 4 This should be properly recognized by all countries and associated organizations who are working towards consistent methods of tracking progress so that duplication can be avoided, gaps identified, and resources directed most effectively. While work continues on international action to support the SDGs, all countries are ‘expected to take ownership and establish a national framework for achieving the 17 goals’. The UN states that countries have the ‘primary responsibility for follow-up and review’ and this ‘will require quality, accessible and timely data collection’. In the UK, for example, the Office for National Statistics (ONS), has been working with the UK Stakeholders for Sustainable Development (UKSSD) to consult on national indicators for the SDGs. And some countries (notably Sweden, Germany, Colombia, the Philippines and Czechia) already have national institutional arrangements. 5

There is general agreement on the breadth and depth of the goals. There are clear obligations and responsibilities for all member states (for which they will be held to account) and a recognition that cross systems approaches to implementation will be needed. This is a significant change from the MDG process and requires explicit contributions from every country, particularly in developing and aligning the complex analytical tools to assess progress and assist decision making. The UN report on ‘critical milestones’ 6 refers to ‘an overarching vision and framework’. Getting accountability structures fit for purpose is already a key challenge. 7 A recent review in Nature 8 identifies that this requires a ‘new coherent way of thinking’ and that while it is implicit in the SDG logic that the goals depend on each other, no-one has specified exactly how. To help, different models have been developed, 9 including both scenario analysis and quantitative modelling. Some of these can be used as top-down macro-framework level tools and some as sectoral models for option level impact analysis. This independent review 7 of 16 countries who volunteered for national review (by the High Level Political Forum) noted a range of different approaches to deal with the complexity of the implementation process. Some countries with existing national sustainable development strategies have built on these and tried to align existing objectives with the new goals. Other countries have developed new national SDG Implementation Plans. Some have linked the SDGs to financial planning for sustainable development or sought to integrate SDGs either in sectoral planning (nutrition, education etc.) or in local government planning frameworks.

Other areas of agreement include the need to integrate the three dimensions of sustainable development (economic, social and environmental), 10 , 11 the importance of raising awareness and creating ownership and the need for stakeholder engagement. 7 , 8 This is especially important to address the widespread misbelief that sustainable development concerns only the environmental dimension and conflicts with necessary ‘economic growth’. No strategy, not even one agreed by all member states of the United Nations, can immediately address historical cultures; yet, it remains one of the most fundamental challenges (and opportunities) for us all to address. The reality is that addressing all three dimensions collaboratively will yield the greatest benefits, whilst the alternative—addressing them separately and in competitive isolation—will deliver much less and with greater risks.

The agreement on the need for ‘systems thinking’, and integration across the three dimensions, is welcome, but the difficulties inherent in this approach should not be under-estimated. This has been illustrated by recent worked examples and case studies.

One worked example 8 concludes that action on the route to zero hunger in sub-Saharan Africa interacts positively with Goal 1 (poverty), Goal 3 (health and well-being), and Goal 4 (quality education). However, it also notes that food production has a more complex interaction with Goal 13 (climate change mitigation). This is because agriculture contributes 20–35% of global greenhouse gases, so climate mitigation constrains some types of food production (particularly meat). Additionally, food production (Goal 2) can compete with renewable energy production (Goal 7) and eco-system protection (Goals 14 and 15). Conversely, climate stability (Goal 13) and preventing ocean acidification (Goal 14) will support sustainable food production and fisheries (Goal 2).

Similarly, the UN paper on mainstreaming the three dimensions 11 highlights water as a nexus of integration and describes how water and sanitation (Goal 6) underpin other areas such as health (Goal 3), food (Goal 2), energy (Goal 7), elimination of poverty (Goal 1), economic productivity (Goal 8), equity (Goal 10) and access to education (Goal 4).

Perhaps the biggest single controversy, particularly because simplicity and logic favour collaborative and system wide implementation, is the high number of goals, targets and supporting actions that have been agreed. This raises concerns about whether governments and international agencies have sufficient skills in ‘whole systems thinking’ 12 to implement the goals without the risk of ‘unintended consequences’ and ‘perverse outcomes’. 8 Early mapping exercises 8 , 11 , 12 have demonstrated the important interconnections between achieving goals but experience suggests that government departments and international negotiations do not always have the mandate or skills to realistically address what might at first appear to be inconvenient and politically contentious trade-offs 8 and unintended consequences.

Deciding which goals to prioritize and then assessing the positive (or negative impacts) on other goals, is a crucial step. There is scope for concern if governments, corporations or agencies were to prioritize energy production (to meet Goal 7), agricultural output (to meet Goal 2) or development of business and infrastructure (to meet Goals 8 and 9), without considering impacts on climate (Goal 13), water (Goal 14) or land (Goal 15). The root cause of this problem is the failure to imagine better ways of addressing energy, agricultural output and what defines success of a business in the 21st century. It is rarely more of what has gone before. The SDGs are the formal stimulus for us to innovate collectively at scale and pace; and to think and act better not bigger. For instance, we need to be more open to the increasing evidence of the many potential positive interactions between different Goals. More equitable and sustainable food systems would help to meet Goal 2, produce ecological benefits (Goals 13–15) and help tackle problems such as obesity and non-communicable disease (Goal 3). 8 , 12

Interestingly, although the SDGs and supporting targets make little mention of tackling world population growth, there are several studies illustrating how coordinated, whole system approaches to the SDGs are already stabilizing the global population. One paper 13 looks at how the SDG targets on mortality, reproductive health and education for girls will directly and indirectly influence future demographic trends. Another paper, 14 looking from the opposite perspective, describes how reductions in fertility in Africa could reduce dependency ratios (the proportion of population not economically active) and thus help tackle poverty (Goal 1), increase productivity (Goal 8), and improve education and gender equality (Goals 4 and 5).

It should be clear that each country will pursue these Global Goals differently, and that a key benefit of the SDG approach is a degree of local flexibility. However, there are certain goals which require urgent collective action, where the clock is ticking on the world’s ability to tackle changes that are already significantly impacting on planetary health. 15 This means that international collaboration must give primacy to action on climate change (Goal 13) and the need to make economic policy subservient to the minimization of environmental impact (see Goal 12: Responsible consumption and production). This is of increasing importance with the recent expressions of electoral judgements in some western countries. The danger is that electorates are seduced into abandoning collective responsibility for the three dimensions of sustainable development in the hope that this will produce short-term benefits for individual countries while ignoring the wider longer term environmental, social and economic costs, knowingly leaving these to be borne by future generations.

A significant risk of allowing countries to take unilateral and apparently self-interested approaches by opting out of multi-state arrangements and economic agreements is the threat of a ‘race to the bottom’ where a country adopts low taxation, relaxed labour laws and reduced regulation as a deceptively attractive way to avoid economic crises. This approach risks increasing health inequity alongside continued restraints on social assistance and environmental protection, with negative impacts on many of the SDGs. Alternatively, a country, region or state could seek to build an economy which is directed at realizing the combined economic, social and environmental benefits associated with implementing the SDGs, with a focus on renewable energy, sustainable food and agriculture and environmentally sustainable technology (recycling, energy conservation and the like). This may also provide a model of sustaining prosperity given the demographic changes and likely labour shortages if countries, such as the UK, shift away from an economic model which depends on a migrant labour force for continued growth.

Given that it took 21 years of annual conferences of parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change before a substantial agreement for action (the Paris Agreement) was achieved in December 2015, there could well be international controversy if reneging on key global commitments weakens the collective resolve. If we accept the fact that human health, and its future survival and prosperity, depend on a liveable earth, we would argue therefore that a refocus of population health to ecological 16 and planetary health 15 is the golden thread which binds the SDGs together as a systems approach. 1 This brings us to a fundamental challenge for governments, businesses, consumers and communities.

To what extent can we seek to implement the SDGs by improvements in current systems and at what point do we need a paradigm shift in our outlook and aspirations? This subject has been explored in relation to health and food systems 17 and in relation to regional trade agreements and health related SDGs. 18 However, it has also been clearly addressed by the United Nations Environment Programme’s ‘Inquiry into the design of a sustainable financial system’. 19 This inquiry points out that ‘failure of the financial system to take adequate account of climate change could result in extensive damage to financial assets globally, may well threaten the stability of the financial system itself, and most importantly could impose irreversible damage to the underlying state of the real economy and the quality of life for those who depend on it for their livelihoods’, a point that has been repeatedly echoed by some of the most powerful financial organizations and people globally. It is not enough to simply wait until action is obviously needed. As Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, says: ‘…once climate change becomes a defining issue for financial stability, it may already be too late’. 20

The existing macroeconomic model had already been challenged by a report prepared for the UK’s Sustainable Development Commission in 2009 21 and developed further by their Economics Commissioner. 22 Essentially, this is a challenge to a global economic model, which sees wealth creation based on rising production to meet ever increased demand as the basis of development. This continued consumption based model would be unsustainable even if the world’s population was stable but is compounded by the projected increase from 6 billion people in 2000 to potentially 9 billion by 2050; the consequences in terms of resources consumed, waste generated and boundaries exceeded will be an unprecedented planetary emergency. 23

However, before we despair completely, some of these reports are also clear that there would be many social, environmental and economic benefits in changing our current model and that ‘transitioning to a green economy opens us to many opportunities as well as posing many challenges’. 19 , 21 The fundamental challenge is aligning the three dimensions across all 17 SDGs and that will challenge many current sectoral interests.

The UK Stakeholders for Sustainable Development recently coordinated an open letter, 24 from over 80 UK businesses, to the Prime Minister, asking her to highlight the UK’s commitment to the SDGs at the 2017 World Economic Forum in Davos. This included not just many UK ethical environmental businesses but also many more traditional major multinational companies such as Coca Cola, Tesco, HSBC, Nestle, Land Rover, KPMG and Standard Chartered. It would seem that large corporations are more aware of the need to fundamentally re-shape the economy than many political parties.

The last two centuries have seen huge advances in our understanding of what causes diseases in individuals. There has been far less progress in understanding systematically exactly what causes health in populations: from a village level or a planetary level. The challenge for this generation is to synthesize our knowledge into creating those conditions that foster health and protect us from poverty as much as they protect us from polio. If we continue to devote resources disproportionately to finding ever more detailed causes of disease without considering the solutions to some of the obvious problems we have created for ourselves and others, we will be breaking the implicit contract we have with future generations, with those people who have no voice or choice; that is the agreement that we make every effort to leave the world in a better place than we found it. Without understanding how we collectively protect and improve all those conditions that make life worth living for all, we will be forever remembered as the generation who knew too much and did too little. The art and science of making change is fraught with more human and cultural barriers than with technical or knowledge barriers. The SDGs provide perhaps the last best hope we have of being honest about why and how we should implement the evidence we already have. The number of challenges and opportunities we face, from demographic transitions to new models of economic activity and workforce development makes it essential that we embrace clear and systematic frameworks for action that are measurable and monitorable and for which we should all be held accountable and responsible. Every generation in history has faced global challenges. ‘We Are the First Generation that Can End Poverty, the Last that Can End Climate Change’. 25

The authors have no potential conflicts of interest.

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• sustainable development

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A bibliometric analysis of sustainable development goals (SDGs): a review of progress, challenges, and opportunities

• Published: 07 May 2023
• Volume 26 , pages 11101–11143, ( 2024 )

Cite this article

• Manoranjan Mishra   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4545-7218 1 , 11 ,
• Sudarsan Desul   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4867-236X 2 , 12 ,
• Celso Augusto Guimarães Santos   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7927-9718 3 ,
• Shailendra Kumar Mishra   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1840-0374 4 ,
• Abu Hena Mustafa Kamal   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2054-2398 5 ,
• Shreerup Goswami   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2558-3623 6 ,
• Ahmed Mukalazi Kalumba   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7593-9096 7 ,
• Ramakrishna Biswal   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3681-9790 8 ,
• Richarde Marques da Silva   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6601-5174 9 ,
• Carlos Antonio Costa dos Santos   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2414-2911 10 &
• Kabita Baral   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0241-738X 11  

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The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a global appeal to protect the environment, combat climate change, eradicate poverty, and ensure access to a high quality of life and prosperity for all. The next decade is crucial for determining the planet’s direction in ensuring that populations can adapt to climate change. This study aims to investigate the progress, challenges, opportunities, trends, and prospects of the SDGs through a bibliometric analysis from 2015 to 2022, providing insight into the evolution and maturity of scientific research in the field. The Web of Science core collection citation database was used for the bibliometric analysis, which was conducted using VOSviewer and RStudio. We analyzed 12,176 articles written in English to evaluate the present state of progress, as well as the challenges and opportunities surrounding the SDGs. This study utilized a variety of methods to identify research hotspots, including analysis of keywords, productive researchers, and journals. In addition, we conducted a comprehensive literature review by utilizing the Web of Science database. The results show that 31% of SDG-related research productivity originates from the USA, China, and the UK, with an average citation per article of 15.06. A total of 45,345 authors around the world have contributed to the field of SDGs, and collaboration among authors is also quite high. The core research topics include SDGs, climate change, Agenda 2030, the circular economy, poverty, global health, governance, food security, sub-Saharan Africa, the Millennium Development Goals, universal health coverage, indicators, gender, and inequality. The insights gained from this analysis will be valuable for young researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and public officials as they seek to identify patterns and high-quality articles related to SDGs. By advancing our understanding of the subject, this research has the potential to inform and guide future efforts to promote sustainable development. The findings indicate a concentration of research and development on SDGs in developed countries rather than in developing and underdeveloped countries.

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Sustainable development goals: a bibliometric analysis of literature reviews

Understanding the Research Interlinkages Between Anthropocene, Millennium and Sustainable Development Goals: A Global Bibliometric Analysis

Bibliometric analysis of scientific publications on “sustainable development goals” with emphasis on “good health and well-being” goal (2015–2019)

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1 Introduction

The Anthropocene era is marked by a range of significant global challenges, including climate change, environmental degradation, public health issues such as global pandemics, rising social inequality, and food and water scarcity in several countries (Huang & Chang, 2022 ; Khojasteh et al., 2022 ). The growing human population demands the speedy development of modern infrastructure, including housing, health care, quality roads, education, communication, and related services (Aravindaraj & Rajan Chinna, 2022 ). Traditional lifestyles and values are eroding fast and being replaced by technology-driven living standards (Chen & Wang, 2022 ; Wahab et al., 2012 ).

The rapid development of the global economy driven by excessive consumption of natural resources and unsustainable development policies has led to serious socioeconomic and environmental challenges in recent decades (Guo et al., 2022 ). Achieving benchmarks of economic growth at any cost has become a top priority for governments to withstand international competition and fulfill local aspirations. In this process, narratives on development often ignore and overlook the irreversible harm caused by developmental hazards to natural entities and the amount of entropy raised in the earth’s system (Alcántara-Ayala, 2002 ; Hemingway & Gunawan, 2018 ).

Sustainability has an important role in the world agenda, mainly after the advances of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development in 1992 (Rio 92), the Declaration of Principles for the Sustainable Management of Forests, and the Agenda 21 of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Guo et al., 2022 ). These advances discussed how to make sustainable development a reality in the world. Furthermore, in September 2001, the United Nations presented the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as a list of common goals for the world community to achieve by 2015. Since then, remarkable progress has been made toward achieving the MDGs (Fehling et al., 2013 ). The objectives of MDGs were to minimize deepening global mistrust toward international economic institutions and provide a unique platform for the member states to act collectively with individual accountability (McArthur, 2014 ). Thus, implementing the MDGs would improve health standards, reduce maternal and child mortality, minimize social disparities, promote gender justice and eradicate poverty among populations to make the earth system a better place to live (Chasse, 2016 ; Doyle & Stiglitz, 2014 ). Long-time concerted and consistent efforts of the UN ultimately succeeded in convincing member states to envisage the tenets of MGDs in their development policies and follow the proposed timelines (Lomazzi et al., 2014 ).

In 2015, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development, which included 17 goals and 169 targets. Since then, greater attention has been paid to sustainability at different levels of governance structures in financial institutions, companies in the public and private sectors, and in governments across the planet (Death and Gabay, 2015 ). Nevertheless, the ongoing deforestation of the Amazon (Silva et al., 2023 ) and rising levels of greenhouse gas emissions are posing severe threats to the health of our planet. This, in turn, is leading to a chain of climate phenomena that have an impact on the economies of nations and the quality of life of their populations (Espinoza et al., 2023 ), as well as an increase in the frequency of severe natural disasters (Mishra et al., 2022 ). Thus, what are the current progress, challenges, and opportunities for the SDGs? Understanding the level of discussion on the SDGs theme is crucial for us to know the available proposals and solutions and see the path forward. In this sense, SDGs have sparked significant interest among a wide range of stakeholders, including those involved in environmental decision-making, business, finance (Di Vaio et al., 2022 ), and water services, particularly governance, management, and technical solutions (Di Vaio et al., 2021 ). Currently, there is global consensus on the importance of implementing the SDGs, which can lead to development while preserving the environment and the population’s quality of life (Bebbington & Unerman, 2018 ). Water sustainability issues were included in the UN’s Agenda 2030 and 17 SDGs, providing a common framework for measuring sustainable development from a social, economic, and environmental perspective (Glass & Newig, 2019 ).

Before sustainable development, the major pitfall of approaches includes the absence of sectoral integration in making strategies and their implementation on the ground level (Garcia-Feijoo et al., 2020 ). The negative consequences of development policies included focusing on a specific sector over other development sectors, which resulted in diverging outputs and followed by trend-setting of broad objectives (Morley et al., 2017 ). The SDGs were considered to determine the international development agenda and the countries’ development policies and programs. Although the SDGs are universal, member states are free to adopt the goals of their choice based on available resources, socioeconomic priorities, and their decided pace of transformation (Eisenmenger et al., 2020 ). The inception of SDGs has triggered many systematic studies to understand, prioritize, and evaluate the progress of goals adopted by countries. The findings of these studies are expected to promote rigorous, evidence-based, reliable, and timely evaluation of achievements toward fulfilling the purposes of countries in their diverse socioeconomic settings (Kroll et al., 2019 ; Mensah, 2019 ; Weitz et al., 2018 ). Currently, decisions made regarding the SDGs are critical for the social, political, environmental, and economic sustainability of the planet. Understanding the global context based on a review of progress, challenges, and opportunities regarding the SDGs is crucial and must be studied.

Research, innovation, and sustainable education are essential mechanisms to achieve the SDGs. Over the years, the study of SDGs has experienced a consistent increase in research activity since its approval in 2015. The existing body of knowledge on SDGs provides researchers with the opportunity to explore the SDGs research domain from a variety of perspectives based on previous publications, which is essential for revealing the structure of the domain and helping researchers better understand the status quo and future trends of SDGs-related topics and to focus their studies more effectively. Some studies have attempted to assess the literature on SDGs by examining prior works. These studies can be classified into two types: qualitative and quantitative review studies. Among the qualitative SDGs review studies, Allen et al. ( 2018 ) conducted an assessment of national progress and approaches to implementing the SDGs in different countries based on existing literature. Caiado et al. ( 2018 ) discussed the roles and opportunities provided by ICTs and AI for achieving the SDGs. Lund et al. ( 2018 ) systematically reviewed how the SDGs can be used to address the social causes of mental disorders and how they could be improved to help prevent mental disorders. Leal Filho et al. ( 2020 ) explored the potential effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the SDGs. To analyze the inclusion, progress, and challenges of the implementation of SDGs, Persson et al. ( 2016 ) revised the SDGs based on alignment and internalization and concluded that increased attention and visibility of nationally defined and internalized targets are likely to enhance implementation effectiveness and should therefore be accommodated in the follow-up and review systems. Allen et al. ( 2016 ) revised and assessed 80 quantitative models that have the potential to support national development planning for the SDGs. Hak et al. ( 2016 ) highlighted the importance of indicators in analyzing the SDGs. Guo et al. ( 2022 ) measured and evaluated SDG indicators with big earth data for a more comprehensive analysis of SDGs.

In recent years, to supplement the existing qualitative reviews of SDGs research, scholars have also explored the SDGs domain through quantitative support such as meta-analysis and bibliometric analysis. Among these quantitative studies, Yamaguchi et al. ( 2023 ) performed a bibliometric analysis of the literature on SDGs to assess the evolution and consolidation of scientific research from 2015 to 2022 retrieved from the Web of Science core collection and descriptive bibliometric analysis. The results showed that the field of SDGs is fast-growing, with a trend toward diversification of research areas. Similarly, many bibliometric studies are being published on SDGs, mainly related to the business sector, education, and poverty (Pizzi et al., 2020 ; Prieto-Jiménez et al., 2021 ; Yu and Huang, 2021 ). However, there is little bibliometric research that covers the general aspects of the SDGs and their evolution. We believe that multi-disciplinary bibliometric research on the SDGs literature is still needed to enable researchers to capture more comprehensive, diverse, and detailed information in this area. To serve as a complement to previous bibliometric studies, this paper attempts to continue the bibliometric journey by exploring the SDGs research domain from a more holistic perspective. In simple words, this study investigates the bibliometric analysis of progress, challenges, opportunities, trends, and prospects of SDGs by the global community from 2015 to 2022, providing insight into the evolution and maturity of scientific research in this field.

The major factors that distinguish this study from previous bibliometric studies on SDGs are the use of a new bibliometric technique, the SciMat, which examines the intellectual structure of SDGs research from both static and dynamic perspectives. Additionally, we analyzed the contents of the most cited articles on each cluster generated by the SciMat tool. Diverse maps of science, including a word cloud of keywords, the most cited keywords, a conceptual structure map, a keyword co-occurrence network, and strategic diagrams, were constructed to depict the intellectual structure of the SDGs domain from different angles.

A bibliometric analysis of the SDGs can have a significant impact on understanding the evolution and consolidation of scientific research on the subject. It can provide an overview of scientific production, identify trends, gaps, and strengths in research, and establish relationships between different authors, institutions, and countries. In this way, bibliometric analysis can contribute to the planning of future research and improve the efficiency of efforts to achieve the SDGs. Furthermore, it can help assess the progress and impact of efforts already made to achieve the SDGs’ goals and targets, as well as identify areas where more effort and investment are needed. In short, a bibliometric analysis of the SDGs can provide a solid foundation for evidence-based decision-making and contribute to the success of global sustainable development efforts.

In order to analyze the published research on SDGs, we divided this work into several sections, such as this Introduction to the topic, containing a brief theoretical review and the objective of this study. Section two contains a literature review highlighting a brief evolutionary history of the development of MDGs and SDGs, the similarities/differences between MDGs and SDGs, and comparisons with other policies around the world. Section three describes the methodology used, database selection and search strategy, and bibliometric analysis. Section four presents the results and analysis, section five highlights the major discussions about SDGs, and section six shows the conclusions of this study. The study of SDGs has seen a steady rise in research since its approval in 2015. The exponential growth of publications has shown a slowing in recent years, suggesting a consolidation phase where literature reviews play a crucial role as high-evidence documents.

2 A brief history of the development of MDGs and SDGs

2.1 evolutionary history of mdgs and sdgs.

Toward the end of the twentieth century, defining development has increasingly become associated with ‘wellbeing,’ which is generally perceived as more than mere economic growth. There has been increasing consensus on rejecting the hegemony of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a monetary measure to establish the market value of the finished or final goods and services produced or availed during a specified time period by any country, as an indicator of development. By 1980, emphasis is given to devising alternative indicators to measure and assess development (Allen et al., 2018 ). Some alternatives are the Genuine Progress Indicator, World Value Survey, Gross National Happiness Index, Happy Planet Index, Better Life Index, and many others (Costanza et al., 2009 ; Rajkarnikar, 2022 ). This is in the context of the broader realization that overemphasis on economic growth-centric development has led to massive environmental degradation, economic inequality, conflict, and socio-cultural unrest. The challenges are how to define development. Which indicators are to be monitored to assess development?

Most importantly, ensure that these indicators emphasize improving environmental conditions, quality of social life, reducing economic inequality, and establishing peace and harmony; however, it does not compromise economic development. None of these alternative indicators of development are entirely adequate. However, they become a building block for the foundation of alternative thinking that emphasizes inclusiveness, sustainability, eco-friendly, trans-disciplinary-and-cooperative effort, and global consensus.

The UN’s MDGs were one of the outcomes of these discourses adopted by the UN in 2000. The MDGs comprised eight primary targets, with the first objective being to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger (Chen et al., 2023 ). This objective had a fixed target to reduce the number of people living on less than a dollar per day by half. The second objective was to achieve universal primary education, while the third was to promote gender equity and empower women. The fourth was to reduce child mortality rates below the age of five by two-thirds, and the fifth target was to improve maternal health. The sixth was to combat diseases such as AIDS and Malaria, and the seventh objective was to ensure environmental sustainability by enhancing access to drinking water and other environmental amenities, especially for underprivileged populations. The eighth SDG aimed to promote global partnerships for development. While the MDGs focused on individual development rather than national development, all SDGs promote the idea of equitable development. National and international cooperation is focused on making development accessible to all, especially those who are underprivileged and underdeveloped (Kherbache & Oukaci, 2020 ). By 2020, progress toward achieving the MDGs had been mixed. However, the MDGs framework was widely recognized as a successful program by the end of its term in 2015. For example, the number of people living in extreme poverty declined from 1.9 billion in 1990 to 836 million in 2015, and the average primary education enrolments across the developing world increased from 83% in 2000 to 91% in 2015. However, the positive trend in reducing poverty was interrupted in 2020 due to the COVID-19 crisis, leading to a significant increase in poverty, with the number of people living in extreme poverty rising by 70 million to surpass 700 million. The global extreme poverty rate rose to 9.3%, up from 8.4% in 2020 (World Bank, 2023 ). Similarly, substantial improvements were made in gender equality. Klasen ( 2018 ) found a persistent gender gap in areas of opportunities, wage rate, political and economic empowerment, and other well-being parameters. Some goals were achieved at the global level, while many countries failed to meet the target. For example, child and maternal mortalities were reduced by approximately half by 2015, but children from poor households were still more likely to be affected by malnutrition, and infant mortality rates were twice as high in the poorest households compared to those in richer households (Awaworyi Churchill, 2020 ).

Similarly, the goal of access to safe drinking water was not successfully achieved in rural areas (United Nations, 2015 ). In a nutshell, the progress was uneven. Further, in other goals, though a significant level of success was achieved, the target was not met. MDG assessments suggest adding new goals and changes to existing goals. For example, Swain and Yang-Wallentin ( 2020 ) indicate that adding a ninth goal to the eight MDGs eliminates extreme inequality at the national level in every country. The MDGs were criticized for their lack of adequate focus on people with disabilities (Wolbring, 2011 ), conflict and peace (Hill et al., 2010 ), and human rights (Fehling et al., 2013 ). To summarize, as MDG Gap Task Force, founded by the UN, gives a comprehensive view of the status of the implementation of the MDGs (United Nations, 2015 ). No development program or initiative is ever cent percent successful. The impact assessment of a program is always along with a continuous range in which the present status stands somewhere. From several impact reports, one thing is evident MDGs certainly made visible impacts on the targeted aspects. For example, one of the noteworthy achievements is a decline in extreme poverty from 47 to 14% from 1990 to 2015 (United Nations, 2015b ). Similarly, the share of undernourished people was also reduced to half.

Further, the child mortality rate declined by 45% during this period (United Nations, 2015b ). However, infectious diseases, gender, and income inequality continued to prevail, and millions of people were still in extreme poverty. Around the globe, more than 60 million people were affected by the conflict from 1990 to 2015 (United Nations, 2015b ). While MDGs had considerable achievements, there were some lacunas as well. The distribution pattern of MDGs implementation varies from region to region and goal to goal. Many developing nations were seriously off-target in cases of undernourishment, infant mortality, maternal mortality, and sanitation. For infant and maternal mortality, around 53% and 61% of the developing nations were reported to be seriously off-target. Again, 40% of the nations were seriously off-target for sanitation. On the other hand, many countries had remarkable progress in eradicating extreme poverty, achieving education and gender parity, and providing clean drinking water. The implementation of MDGs had a differential impact on different sections of people. For example, the poorer sections of the developing nations were often left out of the benefits reaped by MDGs (World Bank, 2016 ). Thus, the accomplishments of the MDGs have neither been uniform across all the goals nor across different parts of the globe. Regional variation in the level of achievement in the case of goals like infant mortality rate, maternal mortality rate, and eradication of malnutrition were low, indicating the poor status of these goals across the world.

On the other hand, high regional variations were noticed in the achievements of the goals, such as eradication of poverty, sanitation, maternal mortality rate, and infant mortality rate. There are also differences in the degree of consistency in implementing MDGs. For example, a very low level of consistency in the status of goals is noticed in countries of the Middle East, North Africa, and South Africa. The MDGs were targeted to be achieved by 2015, but the target status at the end of 2015 sowed the seed of thought among the policymakers to chalk out another set of goals to substantiate the earlier existing MDGs. Therefore, the 17 SDGs were reinvented out of the earlier eight MDGs.

The first framework of SDGs was chalked out at the Rio + 20 conferences (the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development) in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012 to carry forward the impetus sowed by the MDGs in the pursuit of holistic global development. In July 2014, a document containing 17 goals was proposed by the UN General Assembly Open Working Group (OWG) for the General Assembly’s approval in September 2015. This document served as the first official draft of the SDGs. The global community adopted the 2030 agenda for sustainable development goals, including 17 SDGs and 169 targets, and 232 indicators, in September 2015. Subsequently, global SDGs commenced in 2016 and offer an evidence-based policy framework for sustainable development and planning till 2030. SDGs represent the commitment of member countries to achieve sustainability in various sectors (Allen et al., 2018 ). SDGs became an important component of the international development agenda for all countries and significantly influenced national planning post-2015. While the SDGs are universal, the countries have the liberty to determine their priorities and target and scale, and pace of transformation.

Assessing the process of SDGs interventions and their progress over different goals by member countries continues to be challenging. As discussed by Allen et al. ( 2018 ), one of the overarching challenges is dealing with each goal in isolation. That means the integration of sustainable economic, social, and environmental development objectives is yet to be achieved. The interactive relationship between seventeen SDGs and 169 targets compels the planning practices to see it holistically. In 2016, in the first voluntary national review of SDGs was fairly presented, the implication of the knowledge gap of a detailed view of interactive relations among targets and goals and the ability to maintain a holistic perspective has an impairing impact on the planning and implementation of SDGs (Weitz et al., 2018 ).

2.2 Similarity and difference between MDGs and SDGs

Since there was a disparity in the achievement status of the MDGs, efforts were taken to build the SDGs in a way so that a sustainable world could be made with equal value for environmental sustainability, social inclusion, and economic development. It is essential to understand that SDGs are not formulated to replace MDGs; instead, they are intended to substantiate them. Some of the goals under SDGs are improvisations over the previous MDGs, while some new goals have been incorporated into this new framework. Compared to MDGs, SDGs are considered a broader and more complex, integrated, and stimulating agenda for all countries to implement.

Relative to the formulation of MDGs, the process of devising the SDGs was more participatory, involving consultation with civil societies, the private sectors, and the governments of a fair number of countries. The result is a far more comprehensive list of goals, far greater targets (169), and several indicators (232), including many of those goals left out by MDGs. For example, it emphasizes climate change, the environment, peace and conflict, work, and the ocean. However, like MDGs, SDGs are criticized for not emphasizing human rights (Sengupta, 2018 ).

Given the comprehensiveness of SDGs, their assessment requires immense human and financial capital that seems too enthusiastic for developing countries with limited resources (Fenny, 2018 ). The MDGs requirements were more modest (21 targets and 60 indicators) in nature and also complex. While 93 SDGs indicators out of 232 are classified as Tier 1. Again, these indicators are more conceptual clarity, and more than 50% of the countries regularly comply with these data. The left-out indicators are defined as Tier 2 (72 indicators) with conceptual clarity, but data are unavailable. However, the data related to Tier 3 (62 indicators) are not regularly collected by countries because of the non-availability of a well-established methodology or available format of data collection.

The challenge of ensuring environmental sustainability is more marked since the new SDGs try to integrate sustainability issues with multidimensional poverty and inequality. While MDGs considered four different types of environmental targets, the number has expressively increased in the SDGs, containing seven environmental goals (i.e., goals No. 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15), monitored through 77 indicators. The goals are as follows: Goal 7: ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all, Goal 9: build resilient infrastructure, promote sustainable industrialization, and foster innovation, Goal 11: make cities inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable, Goal 12: ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns, Goal 13: take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts, Goal 14: conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources, and Goal 15: sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation, halt biodiversity loss.

2.3 Comparing with other policies around the world

The MDGs of the United Nations have been one of the most talked-about policy interventions globally in the last couple of decades. These policy targets have been formulated, critically reviewed, implemented, and analyzed for the achievements and impacts they have made on the globe. As global needs have changed with changing socio-political equations and dynamics, a strong need has been felt to shift the MDGs framework paradigm. Therefore, the MDGs have been revisited and reinvented to give rise to a set of SDGs. MDGs went on to a certain extent to achieve these goals. They paved the way for higher-order growth needs as SDGs, which aim to address more profound and complex health issues, including mental well-being, nutritional security, quality education, innovation, peace and justice, cultural vitality, equality, and environmental and social resilience, etc.

3 Methodology

The study’s methodology is based on a qualitative method focused on the content of papers related to SDGs, as proposed by Di Vaio et al. ( 2020 ). The methodology applied in this study has two stages. In the first stage, the data extraction method, which includes database selection, and the search strategy, were illustrated, and then the bibliometric analysis was done using bibliometric techniques with the help of appropriate software. These databases have been chosen because they notoriously publish theoretical or empirical studies on topics related to SDGs (Alvino et al., 2021 ). The details of the workflow are presented in Figure 1 .

Research flow, methodology, and tools

3.1 Database selection and search strategy

To collect data for this review, we must select one of the citation databases that index all literature related to SDGs. The Scopus and Web of Science are commonly used databases by the research community for literature searches and bibliometric analyses (Mishra et al., 2020 , 2021 ; Sudarsana & Baba, 2019 ). In this study, the Web of Science (WoS) core collection citation database was used as the primary source of data collection for processing and analysis. This study used the year 2015 because SDGs were adopted on September 2015, and further, we have extended it till October 2022, which is the most recent data available. This database is considered the most well-known citation database, and bibliographical data are stored in a well-structured manner (D’Amore et al., 2022 ; Harzing & Alakangas, 2016 ; Vaio et al., 2021 ), which sufficiently validates the use of the WoS database in the existing study. The effectiveness of the analysis results mainly depends on the search strategy technique. Thus, an effective search strategy was constructed according to the database characteristics after selecting the database to be used.

The following advance query was used: TS = (“sustainable development goals” OR “SDGS” OR “millennium development goals”), [refined by]: DOCUMENT TYPES: (ARTICLE OR REVIEWS) AND [excluding] PUBLICATION YEARS: (2023), Timespan: 2015–2022. Indexes: SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, CPCI-S, A&HCI, CPCI-SSH, BKCI-S, BKCI-SSH, ESCI, IC, CCR-EXPANDED. This query retrieved 12,176 publications (articles and reviews) from 2015 to 2022 on October 2 (2022). The above time period was fixed because SDGs were adopted on September 2015. The identified 12,176 literature records, the citation information, bibliographic information, abstract and keywords, and other information were exported to.txt format files. Then, the dataset in a Bibliometrix package file was transferred from Rstudio software for performing bibliometric analysis and thematic trend analysis (Aria & Cuccurullo, 2017 ). Next, it was transferred to SciMat software for extracting strategic diagrams and thematic evolution maps, after which a specific analysis was performed (Cobo et al., 2012 ).

3.2 Bibliometric analysis

Bibliometrics uses mathematical and statistical methods to analyze literature quantitatively regarding scientific publications’ production, growth, maturation, and consumption. As a result, it has been widely used as an essential tool for assessing and analyzing development status in the research field in terms of the researcher’s production (Ellegaard & Wallin, 2015 ), the collaboration between institutions (Skute et al., 2019 ), the impact of state scientific investment in national R&D productivity (Fabregat-Aibar et al., 2019 ), and the academic quality (van Raan, 1999 ), among other possibilities (Glänzel, 2012 ). The bibliometrics analysis consists of performance analysis and science mapping analysis. Performance analysis is based on bibliometric indicators that measure the production of individual actors (author, intuition, county, and journal) and the impact achieved through publications and citation data. Science mapping analysis provides the topological and temporal representation of a particular research field’s cognitive and social structure (Cobo et al., 2012 ).

A wide variety of bibliometrics tools are available for bibliometric analysis; the mainstream bibliometrics analysis tools include Biblioshiny (R Package), VOSviewer, BibExcel, SciMAT, and CiteSpace (Aria & Cuccurullo, 2017 ; Cobo et al., 2011 , 2012 ; Moral-Muñoz et al., 2020 ). Each tool has different mapping principles, algorithms, visual outputs, and strengths and weaknesses. However, a single tool is not suitable for all types of analysis (Cobo et al., 2011 ). Following Cobo’s review, CiteSpace, Biblioshiny (R Package), and SciMAT were finally selected for this study. The details of each tool as given below.

3.2.1 Biblioshiny (R-tool software)

Biblioshiny is an open-source application that has the potential to import data from different sources (Scopus, Web of Science, among others) and provides various types of bibliometrics analysis (Aria & Cuccurullo, 2017 ). In this study, we have utilized several modules offered by the Bibliometrix application. These modules are primary information, annual scientific production, citation, more relevant sources, more relevant author and affiliation, country, and word cloud.

3.2.2 VOSviewer

VOSviewer is another bibliometric tool widely used for creating bibliometric networks of different actors (e.g., authors and organizations) using various network analysis methods such as co-author, co-citation, term co-occurrence, and bibliographic coupling (Van Eck & Waltman, 2009 ). In this study, we used the term co-occurrence analysis to identify major themes of a research domain. The maps obtained from this software include nodes and edges, indicating the keywords (nodes) and their relationship (edges). Interested readers are referred to the VOSviewer manual for more details about these different analyses ( https://www.vosviewer.com/publications ).

3.2.3 CiteSpace

CiteSpace is also an open-source package based on the Java platform developed by Drexel University (Chen, 2006 ). Indeed, its prime aim is to facilitate the dynamic tracking of emerging trends in the knowledge domain, focusing on identifying key points and turning points in developing knowledge in a field. In the present study, this is mainly applied to the burst detection of analysis function to find hotspots in the research field.

3.2.4 SciMAT

SciMAT is an open-source software tool developed to perform a bibliometrics analysis under a longitudinal framework and provides support to different types of analysis. In this study, we utilized the term co-occurrence module to identify closely linked concepts and explore the thematic evolution of the nexus during the last six years. The information related to the procedure and implementation of this software is presented in (Cobo et al., 2012 ). This software offers two types of maps: strategic diagrams and thematic evolution maps.

3.3 Strategic diagrams

Strategic diagrams (Figure 2 ) reflect the research themes and research keywords based on two indicators of cluster centrality (indicating the strength of interdisciplinary links and the centrality of the theme in research development) and density (indicating the degree of strength)) (Cobo et al., 2012 ). The first diagram (a) is a two-dimensions map divided into four quadrants based on their relevance. The themes are represented as a circle, and their size is proportional to publications associated with the theme. The second is a diagram where the components and their relationship are represented. The four areas, according to their relevance, are Motor themes (Q1: Upper-right quadrant), Highly developed and isolated themes (Q2: Upper-left quadrant), Emerging or declining themes (Q3: Lower-left quadrant), and Basic and transversal themes (Q4: Lower-right quadrant). Motor themes are well-developed topics and the main field of research. Highly developed and isolated themes are topics at a reasonable level in terms of density but are not very central and considered marginal. Emerging or declining is an undeveloped and marginal issue. At the same time, basic and transverse are central issues with a lack of proper density.

Structure of the strategic diagram

4 Result and analysis

To conduct a bibliometric analysis of SDGs related to data retrieved from the WoS in terms of publication, citations, and impact, the following analysis types were considered: Information about data, trends, and characteristics of research publication, most preferred and productive journals, productive author, journal and country, most cited documents, keyword analysis, and thematic evaluation. The detailed results are as follows.

4.1 Information about data

Table 1 provides information on articles retrieved from the Web of Science published from 2015 to 2022. It was found that 12,176 publications published in 1956 journals use 14,120 keywords plus and 26,262 author’s keywords. The number of authors contributing to this domain is 45345, a very high number. There is a high collaboration in SDGs literature, as shown by the collaboration index. The average citation per article is 15.06, and the articles per author ratio are 0.269, which means, on average, almost four authors have written one document.

4.2 Literature trend analysis and characteristics of research publication

In 2015, the SDGs were set up by the United Nations General Assembly (UN-GA) to work toward a sustainable society in which economic prosperity is achieved, and social and environmental concerns are met. Those goals are intended to be completed by 2030 and are included in an UN-GA Resolution called the 2030 Agenda or Agenda 2030. Since then, the interest of the academic community and specialists in the issue of sustainable development, implementations of SDGs at national, regional, and global levels, and informality have materialized in papers, reports, and various other publications.

Table 2 provides the year-wise growth rate of publications and their citations concerning SDGs. A total of 12176 research articles related to SDGs were published from 2015 to 2022, cited 189960 times in total, with an average citation rate per article of 15.06 during the period. In 2015, only 298 articles were published, and these articles received 8725 citations. Since then, it can be seen from Table 2 that the number of published journal articles about SDGs has an obviously and continuously increased trend. This trend shows that progressively more attention has been paid to this domain in recent years. Among the 12176 articles, about 51% were published in the last two years, while nearly 26% were published in 2022. The annual distribution of citation count has shown a slight fluctuation trend. The year 2022 had the highest number of articles, at 3249, and these articles have received 6487 citations. The highest number of citations (34736) was acquired in 2018.

4.3 Most preferred and productive journals for publications

Academic journals are considered the prime medium for disseminating scientific output and are worth researching in any scientific domain (Wuni et al., 2019 ). The most preferred and prominent journals that publish articles in the SDGs domain have been explored. A total number of 3732 articles regarding SDGs were published in these top 15 journals between 2015 and 2022. Table 3 gives the leading journals, each with the number of publications, citations, and the Impact Factor (IF). The leading journals preferred by the researcher are sustainability, Switzerland, with 1730 (12%) publications, 13545 citations, and 3.88 impact factor, followed by Journal of Cleaner Production, UK, with 371 (2.9%) publications, 8574 citations, and 11.07 IF, and Science of the Total Environment, Netherlands with 191 (1.5%) publications, 5655 citations, and 10.75 IF. The table shows that the Journal of Cleaner Production has the highest h-index of 51, the Sustainability has an h-index of 43, and the journal Science of the Total Environment has an h-index of 34. The table also shows that although sustainability has 1359 more publications (total of 1730) than the Journal of Cleaner Production (total of 371 publications), the Journal of Cleaner Production’s impact factor is almost three times higher than Sustainability. A very interesting feature is that in SDGs, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is the 6 th most productive journal having a total number of productions of 153, but its h-index is too low. It is also observed that Switzerland produces a greater number of journals in this field than other countries.

4.4 Highly productive countries and their collaborations

All corresponding authors and their affiliations in each article were considered in the analysis of the most predominant ones. The articles originate from 137 countries/regions. Figure 3 shows the geographical distribution of production for the countries/regions. Table 4 presents the statistics of the top 10 countries/regions based on the total publications in this field. The USA is the most prolific country with 1313 publications (10.7%), followed by China and the UK with 1310 (10.7%) and 1171 (9.6%) publications each. The three countries account for 31% of the total publications, indicating their prominent position in the research field. Furthermore, the USA’s publications have received the highest number of citations (34013) compared to others, showing that it dominates the publication count and has a solid academic influence in the research field.

Geographical distribution of production in the WoS

Concerning collaboration, the UK and the USA again topped for both Single Country Publications (SCP) and Multiple Country Publication (MCP) (Table 4 ). The ratio of MCP to total publications for most of the Top 10 countries was 22–62%. Still, it was about 50% for the UK, reflecting that each country exhibited a strong preference for international cooperation regarding the SDGs study. Table 4 also includes the 2022 SDGs Index Rank of each country.

4.5 Highly productive institutions/organizations

Table 5 provides the top 10 most productive institutions/organizations in SDGs research in terms of publications. The first-ranked institution is the University of Oxford in the UK, which has published 307 articles in this research field, and most of the articles related to maternal mortality (Kassebaum et al., 2016 ; GBD 2017 DALYs and HALE Collaborators, 2018 ) and maternal health (Patel et al., 2018 ) (see Table 6 ). The second and third were the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the Tehran University of Medical Sciences, which published 259 and 244 articles, respectively. The majority of these ten institutions are from the UK (30%) and Australia (20%), and the rest are from Iran (10%), South Africa (10%), the USA (10%), China (10%) and Brazil (10%). It is important to note that there is no single institution from India, even though it was placed in the top ten countries list.

Regarding collaborations, the University of Oxford has strong collaborations with other institutions, especially the University of Cape Town, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, King’s College London, Johns Hopkins University, and Stanford University, as depicted in Fig.  4 .

Collaboration network of top 50 organizations/instructions. The node represents a country; the size of a node is proportional to the number of appearances in the dataset. The line represents relationships between two organizations; the thickness of the line reflects the strength of the relationships

4.6 Analysis of the highly productive authors

In this section, the main authors who structured the field of research on the SDGs were identified. Figure 5 presents Lotka’s law distribution map. The ordinate indicates the proportion of authors of different kinds of literature to all authors, and the abscissa indicates the number of documents. The dotted line in the figure is a general image description of Lotka’s law. As shown in Figure 3 , 35605 researchers published an article, accounting for 78.5% of the total. The number of scholars who published more than six papers was 921, accounting for 0.2% of the total. It can be seen that the researchers in the SDGs research area and the number of documents are similar to the dotted line in the figure, which basically obeys the general law of Lotka’s law. This reflects that the number of authors who have written only one or two articles in the field of SDGs is relatively large. Most scholars in this field have just started in this area, and perhaps this is why research has not yet been in-depth.

The frequency distribution of scientific productivity

Table 7 provides the top 10 most prolific authors by the number of articles from 2015 to 2022, which account for 2.3% of overall articles published from 2015 to 2022. The author with the largest number of papers published and the highest h-index is Zulfiqar Ahmad Bhutta. He has published papers in the field of SDGs since 2015. His main research direction is to evaluate health-related SDGs, as presented in Table 8 . One of Zulfiqar Ahmad Bhutta’s papers is ‘Global, regional, and national disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) for 315 diseases and injuries and healthy life expectancy, 1990–2015: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015’, published in Lancet in 2016, has the highest number of citations ( TC = 1196). Regarding citations, Christopher J. L. Murray has achieved the highest citations compared with other authors. Andrew Adewale Alola, Avik Sinha, and Festus Victor Bekun are published on the same topic, i.e., renewable energy. From the geographical perspective, the core authors from the USA account for 30% of the top 10 core authors, which means that the USA currently has stronger research strength in the SDGs research field than other countries.

4.7 Keyword analysis

Researchers are using keywords to provide a concise description of the research content. As a result, it is one way to identify hot topics and themes of a research domain based on keyword analysis (Zhang et al., 2016 ). The selected documents in the field of SDGs were further examined based on highly occurred keywords via bibliometric software. The Web of Science database offers two types of keywords- author’s keywords and keywords plus. Keywords plus are words or phrases that frequently appear in the titles of an article’s references but do not appear in the title of the article itself (Garfield, 1990 ). The results of this analysis are presented in the form of word clouds. Word cloud analyses of the 30 most frequent keywords in the publication collection are shown in Figure 6 , where a higher occurrence results in a larger font size. The published research trends focused on common terms such as management, impact, health, policy, framework, and governance

Word clouds of the 30 most frequent keywords plus

A deeper analysis was conducted on the co-occurrence of 3739 authors’ keywords which appeared at least ten times in the collection (Figure 7 ). Each node represents a keyword (or topic). The thickness of lines between two nodes represents the strength of the relationship between them, determined by the frequency they appeared together in published papers. Some core research areas were highlighted: sustainable development goals, climate change, agenda 2030, circular economy, Africa, poverty, global health, governance, food security, sub-Saharan Africa, millennium development goals, universal health coverage, indicators, gender, and inequality. The 288 most frequent authors’ keywords were classified into 11 different clusters coded in different colors. Figures 7 and 8 depict several keywords that frequently appeared with sustainable development goal keywords together in published papers.

The co-occurrence of 739 authors’ keywords (at least ten times). The thickness of lines represents the strength of the relationship between keywords, determined by the frequency they appeared together in published papers

The keywords that frequently appeared with the sustainable-development-goals keyword in published papers

4.8 Keyword burst analysis

We carried out keyword burst detection to identify research hotspots of the SDGs domain using CiteSpace (Bommer et al., 2018 ). Table 9 shows 39 keywords with bursts of at least one year. In chronological order, the burst keywords in the SDGs field have changed over the years from 2015 to 2022. The keywords with a burst period greater than four years include global burden (2015–2020), human rights (2015–2020), child mortality (2015–2019), disease (2015–2019), aid (2015–2019), and maternal mortality (2015–2019), which direct that these topics got more attention and are more influential than other keywords. Thus, they became research hotspots of the SDGs domain in corresponding periods. Besides, the perspective and future beginning to burst in 2019 continue to the present, which is currently research hotspots. In connection to burst strength, the millennium development goal (53.01) is the strongest burst, followed by care (24.26), morality (23.75), health (18.33), developing country (17.92), and intervention (16.23), which are research hotspots in their corresponding periods. We argue that the SDGs field’s research hotspots are currently the perspective and future of SDGs-related research.

4.9 Research topics and thematic evolution

SciMAT software offers two types of maps: strategic diagrams and thematic evolution maps. A strategic diagram has been widely used to analyze the trend of change in topics in terms of density and centrality. In contrast, a thematic evolution map has been used to analyze the evolution of topics. To trace the most highlighted themes of the SDGs domain, the study period was divided into two annual intervals (2015–2018 and 2019–2022). Thematic maps of authors’ keywords for each interval and the whole period were generated using SciMAT software from the co-word analysis. In the thematic map (strategic diagram), the circle size is proportional to the number of documents associated with each research theme. An analysis of the results obtained for each period is shown below.

4.9.1 First period (2015–2018)

According to the strategic diagram (Figure 9 ), four research themes can be observed in the 2434 papers selected in this period contributed by 11974 authors: Climate-Change, Millennium-Development-Goals, Middle-Income-Country, Model and Determinants. Of these, two were considered motor themes (Climate-Change and Millennium-Development-Goals), one a highly developed and isolated theme (Middle-Income-Country), one emerging or declining (Model), and finally, one other was considered basic (Determinants). The performance measures for each theme, as shown in Table 10 , complement the information provided by the diagram. According to Table 10 , the following two relevant themes are highlighted: Climate-Change and Millennium-Development-Goals. These themes attain a high impact rate in comparison with the remaining themes.

Strategic diagram for the 2015–2018 period

The motor theme Climate-Change obtained the highest citation count in this period and recorded the highest h-index score. It is related to general topics of SDGs (Climate Action). Mainly, it is focused on how it affects every country on every count due to the rise in average surface temperatures on Earth. It has become a hot research field today since it disrupts national economies and affects lives, costing people, communities, and countries dearly today and even more tomorrow. Figure 10 a depicts a cluster network of Climate-Change. Topics Such as progress on health and climate change (Watts et al., 2017 ), approaches to managing social and environmental issues in the tropics (Reed, 2016 ), soil health and carbon management (Lal, 2016 ), importance of soil and its awareness (Keesstra et al., 2016 ), land degradation Neutrality (Cowie et al., 2018 ), nature-based solutions in land management for enhancing ecosystem services (Keesstra et al., 2018 ), national land system sustainability emergency via sustainability programs (Bryan et al., 2018 ), Strengthening protected areas for biodiversity and ecosystem services (Xu et al., 2017 ), Smart Sustainable Cities (Bibri & Krogstie, 2017 ), future economic consequences of diabetes and Kidney Disease (Luyckx et al., 2018 ), maternal mortality (GBD 2017 DALYs and HALE Collaborators, 2018 ; Kassebaum et al., 2016 ), Sustainable Wellbeing (Costanza et al., 2016 ), social inclusiveness (Gupta & Vegelin, 2016 ), policy for managing the food, water, and energy (Rasul, 2016 ), approaches for Global Sustainable Development (Liu et al., 2018 ), implementation of SDGs (Stafford-Smith et al., 2017 ), sustainable development indicators (Hak et al., 2016 ), transformative innovation policy (Schot & Steinmueller, 2018 ), off-grid solar energy (Nerini et al., 2018 ), electricity access (Alstone et al., 2015 ) are disused in this cluster.

Thematic network of ( a ) climate-change and ( b ) millennium-development-goals

Millennium-Development-Goals is one of the motor themes and is the second most crucial theme of this period. This theme comprises research conducted on different aspects of Nations Millennium Development Goals (Figure 10 b), especially healthcare access and quality (Abbott et al., 2017 ; Fullman et al., 2018 ; Milat et al., 2015 ), health policy (Buse & Hawkes, 2015 ), Children mortality (Ebener et al., 2015 ; Wolf et al., 2018 ), global rules for the private sector (Scheyvens et al., 2016 ), drinking water (Adams, 2018 ; Martinez-Santos, 2017 ), poverty (Asadullah & Savoia, 2018 ), MDGs progress (Gaffey et al., 2015 ; Mohammadi et al., 2017 ; Moucheraud et al., 2016 ). It mainly focuses on the global development agenda transitions from the MDGs to the SDGs.

The basic and transversal theme determinants are composed of a few publications, but they received the best impact (h-index) in this period. It represents the research conducted (Figure 11 a) on different aspects of Determinants, such as women, infants, and inequality. It mainly focuses on delivery care services (Pulok et al., 2016 ), Intimate partner violence (Mohammed et al., 2017 ), maternal health care services (Ganle, 2016 ; Mehata et al., 2017 ), and mortality (Ahmed et al., 2016 ; Dendup et al., 2018 ). Middle-Income-Countries is a highly developed and isolated theme that represents research conducted on Middle-Income-Countries (Figure 11 b) with living conditions of poor rural households, Early Childhood Development (Black et al., 2015 , 2017 ; Richter et al., 2017 ), Equity in vaccination coverage nutrition (Arsenault et al., 2017 ), and child marriage (Kalamar et al., 2016 ).

Thematic networks of ( a ) determinants and ( b ) middle-income-countries

4.9.2 Second period (2019–2022)

In this period, a total of 9742 publications were contributed by 36816 authors, distributed in eight SDGs themes (Figure 12 ), with five major research themes (Motor themes plus basic theme): Sustainable-Development-Goals, CO 2 -Emissions, Areas, Emissions, and Strategies. Regarding the performance measures shown in Table 11 , five themes stand out due to the citations achieved and scored h-index over 8: Sustainable-Development-Goals, CO 2 -Emissions, Strategies, Children, and Areas. However, the motor themes Sustainable-Development-Goals and CO 2 -Emissions are the most inflectional for structuring the SDGs research field.

Strategic diagram for the 2019–2021 period

Sustainable-Development was consolidated as a motor theme in this period (Figure 12 ). Moreover, it is the theme with the highest number of documents and achieves the highest number of citations count and h-index score. It obtains the highest density score, which means that its research has great internal cohesion. SDGs rise from the evolution of the themes of Climate change, Model, and Millennium-Development-Goal of the previous period. The research (Figure 13 a) on this theme relates to 17 goals.

Thematic network of ( a ) SDGs, ( b ) CO 2 -Emissions, ( c ) strategies, and ( d ) children

To further show more information from this cluster, some most cited papers of this cluster are also investigated. To name a few, Salvia et al. ( 2019 ) examined the difficulties and potentials in pursuing and implementing the SDGs, especially among developing nations. Schroeder et al. ( 2019 ) studied the contribution of circular economy practices such as repair, remanufacturing, and recycling to SDGs. More efforts in skill training, technology development, and multistakeholder partnerships are required to make advanced Circular Economy practices. Hughes et al. ( 2019 ) discussed Blockchain research, practice, and its potential in the future in various fields and factors. Leal et al. ( 2019 ) noted that the implementation of the SDGs at universities is still in the initial stage. They provided an overview of the level of emphasis placed on the SDGs by Higher Education Institutions. Nerini et al. ( 2019 ) explored the connection of climate change action with other SDGs. They suggested that climate change action can strengthen all 17 SDGs while undermining efforts to achieve 12. Governance processes and structures must be better connected to maximize the legitimacy and effectiveness of action in both domains. Huovila et al. ( 2019 ) reported the standardized indicators for smart, sustainable cities that balance sustainability and smartness. Fonseca et al. ( 2020 ) mapped the relationship between SDGs. They found no significant correlation with other SDGs, epically Climate action and partnerships for the goals, which provides scope for future research.

The theme of CO 2 emissions emerged during this period and can be considered one of the main topics of SDGs, as evidenced by its high h-index score and the considerable number of citations. CO 2 emissions have evolved from the themes of Determinants and Millennium Development Goals in the previous period. Across the globe, countries are consistently facing one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century: saving and sustaining the environment. The most developed countries are often the largest emitters of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), resulting in an urgent policy drive toward environmental sustainability.

The research on this theme relates to ecological footprint, greenhouse gas emissions, natural resources, pollution, technological innovation, and supply chain (Figure 13 b). To further show more information from this cluster, some most cited papers of this cluster are also investigated. To name a few, following the SDG 17 of improving global partnerships for sustainable development, Shahbaz et al. ( 2019 ) explored the association between foreign direct investment and carbon emissions in the Middle East and North African region in the 1990–2015 period. They found that there is a need to develop comprehensive trade and energy policies by targeting cleaner production practices for a sustainable environment and fulfilling the objectives of SDGs. Sarkodie and Strezov ( 2019 ) examined the effect of foreign direct investment inflows, economic development, and energy consumption on disaggregate greenhouse gas emissions. Alola et al. ( 2019 ) discussed the role of trade policy, energy consumption, economic growth, and fertility rate on environmental pollution in 16 European member countries. Saint Akadiri et al. ( 2019 ) reported that by using renewable energy, carbon emission mitigation is very much achievable in the EU-28 countries and should also be adopted by all countries as an effective global policy to achieve SDGs by the year 2030.

The basic theme of strategies appears in this period as one of the emerging research themes. It mainly focuses (Figure 13 c) on 17 SDGs strategies for promoting sustainable practices and solutions that address our society’s main issues. To further show more information from this cluster, some most cited papers of this cluster are also investigated. To name a few, Chen et al. ( 2020 ) proposed strategies for green chemistry principles implementation from the aspects of governance, industry, and education. Dantas et al. ( 2021 ) reviewed the contribution of the circular economy and industry 4.0 toward achieving SDGs.

The highly developed and isolated motor theme of children appears in this period as a bifurcation of the MDGs theme from the previous period. The research (Figure 13 d) is related to disease, risk, interventions, childhood development, and disability. To further present information from this cluster, we investigated some of the most cited papers. The bold new target of safely managed water, sanitation, and hygiene for all by 2030 warrants the attention of researchers, policymakers, and practitioners. Cumming et al. ( 2019 ) reported that major water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions did not affect childhood stunting, and mixed effects on childhood diarrhea resulted from five consensus points. Chen et al. ( 2019 ) studied how dietary changes can significantly contribute to achieving the 2030 national SDGs. Early childhood development is key to achieving SDGs and can be negatively influenced by many adversities, including home violence, neglect, abuse, and parallel health. There were consistent and strongly negative relationships between all measures of childhood adversity and all five childhood growth and development outcome measures at the age of 18 months (Bhopal et al., 2019 ). Bhutta et al. ( 2020 ) reported how countries could reduce child stunting, with or without closing geographical, economic, and other population inequalities. Josenhans et al. ( 2020 ) studied the sexual exploitation of boys. Hall et al. ( 2019 ) suggested that research should focus on interventions to alleviate poverty-related stress to achieve the United Nations SDGs. Toska et al. ( 2020 ) reported that children of an adolescent mother with AIDS show more health problems than others. This should be controlled in a country with a high number of adolescents.

4.9.3 The most cited publications

The contents of the most cited papers are considered to be of great importance in the academic world, as they reflect the impact of research in a particular field. By analyzing the most cited papers, it is possible to understand the current state of knowledge in a certain area and identify gaps that need to be filled in future research. In this context, it is also possible to understand the implications for future research based on the contents of the most cited papers (Gaffey et al., 2015 ). When it comes to the SDGs, the most cited papers are a reflection of the current state of research in the field and provide important insights into the areas that need further investigation. Table 12 displays the most frequently cited papers according to the total number of citations received. It is noteworthy that the papers authored by Liu et al. ( 2016 ), Pecl et al. ( 2017 ), Zhang et al. ( 2015 ), Black et al. ( 2017 ) Kruk et al. ( 2018 ), Patel et al. ( 2018 ), Black ( 2015 ), and GBD 2017 DALYs and HALE Collaborators ( 2018 ), Kassebaum et al. ( 2016 ) occupy the top 10 spots in the ranking. The majority of these papers focus on health, climate change, nitrogen, and agriculture.

The selected articles address various topics related to the SDGs established by the United Nations. The most cited papers on the SDGs reflect this need, as they often involve the analysis of inequalities and the identification of ways to ensure that everyone has access to the resources and opportunities they need to thrive (Zhu et al., 2021 ). Among the top 10 most cited articles, we have selected the six most highly cited ones for special attention. Liu et al. ( 2016 ) study investigated the causes of infant mortality at the global, regional, and national levels, offering important implications for achieving SDGs related to health. Meanwhile, Pecl et al. ( 2017 ) discussed the effects of climate change on biodiversity, highlighting the importance of preserving ecosystems for human well-being. Zhang et al. ( 2015 ) analyzed nitrogen management as a form of sustainable development, given its importance for agriculture and pollution reduction. On the other hand, Black et al. ( 2017 ) conducted a study on early childhood development, emphasizing the importance of this period for the formation of healthy and productive adults. Kruk et al. ( 2018 ) addressed the need for high-quality health systems to achieve SDGs related to health, highlighting the importance of innovation and political commitment. Finally, Patel et al. ( 2018 ) work explored the relationship between mental health and sustainable development, emphasizing the need for public policies that address this issue in an integrated manner. Together, these articles highlight the complexity and interdependence of the SDGs, as well as the need for an integrated approach to sustainable development. In addition, the studies emphasize the importance of research and innovation in addressing global challenges and achieving the goals established by the United Nations (Table 12 ).

In conclusion, the contents of the most cited papers on the SDGs provide important insights into the current state of research in the field and the implications for future research. The need for interdisciplinary approaches, practical solutions, a focus on equity and social justice, and innovation and technological solutions are some of the key implications that can be derived from the analysis of the most cited papers. By considering these implications, future research can contribute to the achievement of the SDGs and ensure that everyone has access to a high quality of life and prosperity.

5 Discussion

To assess the distribution of SDGs in literature review publications over the years, the articles were individually analyzed and classified. It should be noted that the publications could be included in multiple categories. As a result, the majority of documents were categorized under general aspects of sustainability, including environmental sciences, environmental studies, and green science and sustainable technology.

The results of the bibliometric analysis indicate that research and development on the SDGs are more concentrated in developed countries than in developing and underdeveloped nations. This trend highlights the need for greater investment and engagement from developing countries in addressing the global sustainability challenges posed by the SDGs. This study is the first to conduct a bibliometric analysis of the SDGs and examine the progress, challenges, and opportunities during the period from 2015 to 2022. The results of this study reveal differences in the utilization of the SDGs theme.

Based on the analysis and results obtained from this paper, we have observed a huge disparity in participation in the development process through scientific contributions. The current development trajectories also follow the same path, with countries and regions with more resources contributing more than those with fewer resources. According to Sweileh ( 2020 ), the highest volumes of research are found in SDGs 1, 3, 11, 12, and 15. Similar results were obtained by Sianes et al. ( 2022 ), who used bibliometric methodologies to evaluate the impacts of SDGs on the academic agenda, while Salvia et al. ( 2019 ) highlighted that SDGs 11, 12, 13, and 15 were high research themes, and SDGs 8 and 14 were least researched.

According to the results obtained, articles related to SDGs on hunger, energy, and peace were only published starting in 2017, while articles related to more applied and diverse SDGs research were found starting in 2018, as also reported by Yamaguchi et al. ( 2023 ). Regarding the studies published starting in 2018, those of an environmental nature, i.e., related to nature and technology areas such as water and sanitation, industry, innovation and infrastructure, food and agriculture, business and management, development studies, and urban studies, climate change, and ecosystems, can be highlighted. These results show progress and a trend in SDGs studies, pointing to a growth in environmental research. Similar findings have been reported in previous studies by Sweileh ( 2020 ), Londono-Pineda and Cano ( 2022 ), and Yamaguchi et al. ( 2023 ). However, Yamaguchi et al. ( 2023 ) focused on the most cited articles, and Sweileh ( 2020 ) only analyzed articles with the phrase “sustainable development goal”, while this study has a broader scope. In addition, Londono-Pineda and Cano ( 2022 ) analyzed the main methodologies used for evaluating SDGs through bibliometric analysis. Scopus and Web of Science were identified by El Mohadab et al. ( 2020 ) as the primary databases for bibliometric analysis.

This study demonstrates that countries with the most institutional affiliations from authors also have corresponding funding to support research in diverse universities and institutions. Most of the publications found were articles published in highly indexed journals. However, the concentration of cutting-edge knowledge in specific countries, institutions, and authors is a concern. According to Londono-Pineda and Cano ( 2022 ), co-authorship can be an efficient strategy for institutions in developing countries to generate high-impact publications on issues related to SDG assessments. Sweileh ( 2020 ) notes that collaboration related to SDGs in America and Europe is strong, but collaboration in African and Asian countries is poor. To promote a more comprehensive assessment of the SDGs, it is necessary to transcend independent SDG assessments and recognize the thresholds of each dimension, allowing for the consideration of trade-offs among the SDGs. Didegah and Thelwall ( 2013 ) suggest that inviting and collaborating with researchers from third-world countries would help publish high-impact factor journals and attract funds for research proposals related to SDGs.

It can be inferred that there is a regionalization of research interest related to various goals and targets of SDGs. The developed world (USA, Canada, Australia, and Europe) is more interested in SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), and SDG 13 (Climate Action) but the African world more interested in SDG 13 (Climate Action), SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 5 (Gender Equality), SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), SDG 15 (Life on Land) (Körfgen et al., 2018 ; Salvia et al., 2019 ). Thus, it is observed that most of the research on SDGs is related to social problems like poverty, hunger, education, conflict, gender, and peace. However, global warming and climate change are also global environmental threats to the life-supporting system on earth (Zhenmin & Espinosa, 2019 ). These results were expected, as environmental sciences are an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physics, biology, and geography and studies the environment and the solution to environmental problems, covering a wide range of topics (Yamaguchi et al., 2023 ).

The top 10 countries, institutions, and authors publishing on SDGs represent the world’s developed economies. However, most research carried out was related to social problems (poverty, hunger, education, gender, and peace) in the underdeveloped world (Yamaguchi et al., 2023 ). The lack of participation or opportunity to contribute to the global goals research would make countries remain unaware of the happenings around the world, thus making SDGs 2030 unattainable. One of the primary goals of the SDGs is to demonstrate the world as a whole rather than just a few countries. However, the patterns of research and development highlight that research interest is regionalized according to the scale of the problem in their area (Sweileh, 2020 ).

Climate, ecosystems, health systems, and inequality have been major research areas in the past, contributing to SDGs 13, 14, 15, 3, and 10 (Yamaguchi et al., 2023 ). The highly productive countries contributing to SDGs research themes include the USA, UK, Australia, Germany, China, Switzerland, Spain, India, and South Africa. European countries, including Sweden, Austria, France, Finland, and Denmark, are top of the list of high research citations. The top 10 productive institutions/organizations in SDGs research are based on the UK, USA, Australia, Switzerland, and South Africa. The top 10 prolific authors in SDGs come from the USA, Switzerland, the UK, Canada, and Iran. The gap is evident in the goals covered, countries’ participation, institutions, and the share of authors from particular regions. Developed countries research more on SDGs than developing and underdeveloped countries, where most of the world population lives (Salvia et al., 2019 ; Sweileh, 2020 ). The voices of these people are silent in research publications. Their narratives fail to find a place in our research documents.

The study makes a valuable contribution to the literature as the first review to focus on the most frequently evaluated SDGs, and one of the few studies, along with Sweileh ( 2020 ), Londono-Pineda and Cano ( 2022 ), and Yamaguchi et al. ( 2023 ), to identify the recurrent types of assessments related to the 2030 Agenda for SDGs. The findings are in line with the need for research that promotes more comprehensive assessments of the agenda, as highlighted by Ahner-Mchaffie et al. ( 2018 ), El Mohadab et al. ( 2020 ), Meschede ( 2020 ) and Zhu et al. ( 2021 ). To achieve a more comprehensive assessment of the SDGs, it is essential to move beyond individual evaluations and instead recognize the interdependence and trade-offs among the various dimensions, which can be achieved by acknowledging the thresholds of each SDG.

6 Concluding remarks: the way forward

This study investigated the bibliometric analysis of trends, trajectories, and prospects of SDGs by the global community based on the Web of Science core database from 2015 to 2022. Even after seven years of implementation of SDGs, the agenda of 2030 are having still complex interlink age between goals and also overambitious targets. The result of the study revealed an increasing trend of publication during the studied period, but goals are not highlighted in a consolidated manner.

The top five countries with the highest number of publications and citations are from the developed world (USA, China, UK, Australia, and Spain), whereas the least contributing countries are from the developing world. Again, the top 5 productive authors are also from the developed world. It has been highlighted that good health and well-being are the thematic areas of research for the underdeveloped world, and climate action is a focus area of research for high-income countries. Thus, it shows that the goals of SDGs are not consolidated but divisive in nature, and the reason may be practical challenges surrounding implementing SDGs. Again, keyword analysis emphasized about core research areas: ‘sustainable development goals, climate change, agenda 2030, circular economy, Africa, poverty, global health, governance, food security, sub-Saharan Africa, millennium development goals, universal health coverage, indicators, gender, and inequality’; and these words are primary needs of human life.

The goals related to the basic needs of human being to just have human life should not treat as unrealistic aspirations and call for prioritizing SDGs. Therefore, education, funding, and innovation of green technology are critical elements to achieve the target of SDGs in 2030. Again, there is a need for a periodical investigation of SDGs-related published documents to get an insight into the gap in achieving the global 2030 agenda.

There is no specific theory regarding the SDGs. Instead, they represent a holistic approach to global development with 17 interconnected and interdependent goals. Achieving them requires collaboration from all sectors of society, emphasizing an integrated approach, technology, financial inclusion, and continuous monitoring. The importance of collaboration, an integrated approach, technology, financial inclusion, and continuous monitoring has been identified as the main theoretical findings of the SDGs. There are no specific practical discoveries related to the SDGs, as they represent a holistic approach to global development, with goals such as eradicating poverty, ensuring gender equality, protecting the environment, and promoting economic growth. Practical advancements related to the SDGs have been made in areas such as policy and decision-making, partnerships and collaboration, data and measurement, and financing. The implementation of SDGs has also demonstrated the importance of a multi-stakeholder approach, innovative financing mechanisms, and technology to achieve sustainable development.

Studies on the SDGs are highly complex due to the interdisciplinary nature and scope of the objectives and targets involved in this theme. Therefore, more research should be carried out to fill this gap by developing more effective and reliable methods to verify progress toward the SDGs. To achieve this, it is recommended to incorporate other bibliographic databases to further increase the reach of the bibliometric review of this topic, including non-Web of Science databases and the inclusion of grey literature such as reports from government and non-governmental agencies.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available upon reasonable request.

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Mishra, M., Desul, S., Santos, C.A.G. et al. A bibliometric analysis of sustainable development goals (SDGs): a review of progress, challenges, and opportunities. Environ Dev Sustain 26 , 11101–11143 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-023-03225-w

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Introduction, management research and sdgs, university and academic initiatives concerning the sdgs, overview of papers, where to go from here, management research and the united nations sustainable development goals.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2021

In this editorial, we are delighted to introduce the seven papers in this Special Issue. Each article considers various aspects of how management research can assist in the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in different contexts. Starting from a desire to provide a mechanism to drive real research outcomes for management research, this editorial considers the SDGs and their implementation/adoption in universities and businesses to date. It then introduces the different contexts for management research and the SDGs explored in the seven articles in the Special Issue. Finally, in a Postscript at the end of this Special Issue, we look at current progress against the SDGs, how COVID-19 has impacted this progress and what the future may hold for the links between management research and the SDGs.

This Journal of Management & Organization Special Issue on the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 (SDGs) has been developed following the Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management (ANZAM) 2019 Annual Conference held in Cairns, Australia and hosted by the School of Business and Law, Central Queensland University. The theme of this conference was ‘ Wicked Solutions to Wicked Problems: The Challenges Facing Management Research and Practice ’ and a wide range of diverse papers, dealing with various wicked (and not so wicked) problems were submitted. A selection of presented papers with a strong orientation to the UN SDGs, alongside other papers received through a second Call for Papers, have been put through a separate detailed blind review process before finalising the seven papers contained herein.

In this editorial, we begin by outlining our initial motivation to explore the UN SDGs in the context of the management discipline, in which we also highlight that management research, not just management education, has a large role to play in understanding and addressing the big, complex challenges in the world; at this point, however, we also outline the recently emerging criticisms of universities, and management research specifically, as being removed from those complex, real-world problems. Following a brief discussion of the related concepts of SDGs, Grand Challenges and Wicked Problems, we demonstrate the popularity of the SDGs and provide an overview of the various recent developments towards achieving our advocated alignment between management scholarship and SDGs. We then provide a synopsis of the papers in this Special Issue, before concluding the editorial with an overview of the current progress against the SDGs, how COVID-19 has impacted this progress, and what the future may hold for the links between management research and the SDGs.

Our initial interest in the UN SDGs stemmed from a desire to find a reality focus for management research in our business schools. That is, mechanisms to assist management researchers to apply their skills to real-world problems, rather than theory building or extension with little or no connection to practice or key societal issues. For some years, a number of authors have commented on the growing disconnect between academic management research and the practical realities of the world. The growing emphasis on research ‘quality’ (as measured primarily by journal citation impact) has been a dominant factor in most higher education business schools, with various journal ‘quality’ rankings becoming key drivers of the research agendas of management academics. This view still persists despite the fact that such measures have been severely criticised as: (i) diverting academic management research away from the key issues of the world (Jarwal, Brion, & King, Reference Jarwal, Brion and King 2009 ), (ii) generating ideological separations between academic teaching and research roles (Balkin & Mello, Reference Balkin and Mello 2012 ) and (iii) creating problems for effective performance management in business schools (Chapman, Reference Chapman 2012 ).

In the context of teaching and learning, business schools have been educating students on ethics, corporate social responsibility and related sustainability concepts, thus shaping students' knowledge, skills and attitudes towards the need to address societal problems in their professional careers (e.g. Setó-Pamies and Papaoikonomou, Reference Setó-Pamies and Papaoikonomou 2016 ). However, the same focus on sustainability and solving society's big problems is not present in academics' research roles. This contributes to the above-mentioned chasm between business schools' teaching and research activities as the focus on ‘making a difference’ and ‘real-world relevance’ advocated in the classroom is not mirrored in management research: business schools, journals and management academics have had few incentives to address critical problems of business or society generally, because the performance measurement systems and funding models have obscured any real link between investment and returns (Glick, Tsui, & Davis, Reference Glick, Tsui and Davis 2018 ). Furthermore, by disconnecting from the real world of business and community and researching primarily for the sake of ‘highly-ranked’ journal publication, management scholarship has become largely socially irresponsible (Tsui, Reference Tsui 2015 ). According to Tsui ( Reference Tsui 2015 : 38), a former President of the US Academy of Management: ‘[i]t is failing to meet the goal of science: to discover truth and improve the human condition’.

In the last 10 years or so, several authors have questioned the reigning paradigm for management research in highly critical terms:

Today, it's more ‘publish as we perish’. We have been producing more and more shit of less and less overall quality for a generation. Has it advanced ‘knowledge’? Face it, you've read thousands of articles in your career and you've been influenced by, at best, a few dozen. (Alvesson & Gabriel, Reference Alvesson and Gabriel 2013 : 246)

However, there have been growing calls to address these systemic problems. The key international business school accreditation bodies (AACSB, EFMD and AMBA) have increasingly included research impact, engagement and innovation into their accreditation standards. EFMD (European Foundation for Management Development), which was founded with a greater emphasis on corporate connections and sustainability, created the Business School Impact System in 2014 to help schools more fully assess their impact on business and society. They have also incorporated an expectation that schools demonstrate a commitment to be globally responsible citizens in their 2013 accreditation standards.

In 2014, a group meeting of concerned northern hemisphere researchers formed the Community for Responsible Research in Business and Management (cRRBM) dedicated to addressing these growing concerns regarding business research generally. In 2017, this organisation (now generally referred to as RRBM) put forward a position paper which included their Vision 2030: ‘A Vision of Responsible Research in Business and Management: Striving for Useful and Credible Knowledge’ (RRBM, 2017 ). This position paper articulated their vision for ‘a future in which business schools and scholars worldwide have successfully transformed their research toward responsible science, producing useful and credible knowledge that addresses problems important to business and society’. Today, the RRBM has expanded to 28 co-founders and 85 co-signers of the position paper, plus almost 1,200 endorsers, over 65 institutional partners and seven pioneer schools.

In 2018, CEEMAN, an international management development association established in 1993 with close to 200 members from 45 countries in Europe, North America, Latin America, Africa and Asia, published the CEEMAN Manifesto, ‘Changing the Course of Management Development: Combining Excellence with Relevance’. It constitutes a call to action for management education institutions to determine if both excellence and relevance are sufficiently featured in their mission and strategy (CEEMAN, 2018 ).

In other developments, the UK Research Excellence Framework that drives government funding for UK universities in 2014 added a 20% weighting on the societal impact of universities research programmes. The National Science Foundation (NSF) in the USA added a ‘broader impacts’ criterion to funding proposals from 1997 and organisations such the Centre for Open Science have introduced multiple initiatives related to openness, transparency and reliability for research reporting (Glick, Tsui, & Davis, Reference Glick, Tsui and Davis 2018 ).

In the last few years, ‘real’ research impact has been regularly appearing in research discussions concerning Australian and New Zealand universities as well. The Australian government has introduced a new Engagement and Impact Assessment (EI) to run alongside the existing Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) assessment from 2018 onwards, and New Zealand has been using its Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF) for some time, which focuses more on individual research outcomes and includes impact and engagement considerations. As this editorial is being written (September 2020), the Australian Research Council (ARC) have submissions open for a comprehensive review of both the ERA and EI schemes. International networks of leading researchers such as those discussed above, business school accreditation bodies and societal pressures for greater value from universities are pushing publishers, academies and business schools to focus on issues of real importance to industry and society.

Therefore, the importance of real-world relevance in teaching is obvious, and there is clearly also a growing movement to encourage and reward real societal outcomes for management research, as opposed to research driven primarily by citation impact factors and publication counts frequently incentivised by internal university systems. Despite these developments, we have seen only limited discourse on mechanisms and frameworks to guide and assist academics in undertaking such research.

However, the world is full of complex problems and large-scale, even global, issues and changes that defy simplistic solutions but could certainly benefit from academic research to better understand and address them. The terms ‘Grand Challenges’ (Brammer, Branicki, Linnenluecke, & Smith, Reference Brammer, Branicki, Linnenluecke and Smith 2019 ; George, Howard-Grenville, Joshi, & Tihanyi, Reference George, Howard-Grenville, Joshi and Tihanyi 2016 ) and ‘Wicked Problems’ (Elia & Margherita, Reference Elia and Margherita 2018 ) are often linked to these complex issues, and the UN SDGs are an attempt to encapsulate many of these problems into a framework of goals and targets to assist actions addressing these problems. Grand Challenges are large-scale problems often best articulated by a combination of the SDGs. Wicked Problems are similar in scope, often defined by the original 10 criteria identified by Rittel and Webber ( Reference Rittel and Webber 1973 ) and discussed at length by Crowley and Head ( Reference Crowley and Head 2017 ). In addition, Peters ( Reference Peters 2017 ) has extended the definition using four additional criteria to create what he has termed ‘super-wicked problems’. Also, wicked problems are often divergent, where different answers appear to increasingly contradict each other the more they are elaborated (Schumacher, Reference Schumacher 1977 ). It is clear that there is considerable overlap between these three terms, with the possible achievement of the SDGs by 2030 requiring solutions to a great many grand challenges and wicked problems.

The inception of the SDGs goes back to the year 2000, when 189 country leaders signed the so-called Millennium Declaration at the United Nations headquarters. By signing this declaration, they confirmed their commitment to achieving eight specific goals (the Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs for short) by 2015. Clearly measurable targets were attached to each of these eight goals, which ranged from eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, over promoting gender equality and empowerment of women, to ensure environmental sustainability and establishing global partnerships for development.

Movement towards achieving the MDGs generated momentum and inroads were made to achieve some of these goals, but others required more work. Thus, the UN conducted extensive global consultation in order to generate a people-centred development agenda that would build upon said momentum, to address areas that required further development, and to expand the goals both in terms of their scope and time duration, beyond 2015. This consultation process eventually resulted in the identification of 17 SDGs, each containing a number of specific targets (altogether 169 targets), which cover three dimensions of sustainable development: economic growth, social inclusion and environmental protection. The 17 SDGs are commonly depicted as shown in Figure 1 .

Figure 1. The UN SDGs for 2030. Source : https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/development-agenda/ .

Although the SDGs contain these broad goals and large number of targets, they are not developed to be relevant only for governmental or organisational leaders – instead, the UN frames the SDGs as an open call, aimed at everyone, globally, to join the movement towards achieving the 17 goals, by specifically highlighting the need for action on the following three levels:

global action to secure greater leadership, more resources and smarter solutions for the Sustainable Development Goals; local action embedding the needed transitions in the policies, budgets, institutions and regulatory frameworks of governments, cities and local authorities; and people action , including by youth, civil society, the media, the private sector, unions, academia and other stakeholders, to generate an unstoppable movement pushing for the required transformations (United Nations, 2020 ).

It is clear from this call to action that academia, as well as the public and private sector, has a role to play in supporting the achievement of the SDGs. This includes the management discipline; George et al. ( Reference George, Howard-Grenville, Joshi and Tihanyi 2016 ) had previously demonstrated this importance of the management discipline by showing how management practitioners and management researchers are affected by Grand Challenges and how they can, in turn, play a significant role in impacting change towards addressing, or even solving, some of these Grand Challenges. Despite George et al.'s ( Reference George, Howard-Grenville, Joshi and Tihanyi 2016 ) clear demonstration of the relevance of management discipline for the Grand Challenges, we decided to focus on the SDGs as the best approach to provide guidance for academic management research because of the more specific nature of the SDGs and the associated targets for each goal.

Our decision to focus on the SDGs, as opposed to the other related concepts, is further supported by the SDGs' global popularity, as the SDGs have captured the interest of the general population considerably more than the terms ‘Wicked Problems’ or ‘Grand Challenges’. Figure 2 , derived from a Google Trends analysis, illustrates this accelerating general global interest in the SDGs over the last few years: worldwide web searches for the term ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ have grown markedly since 2015 – the chart displays search interest relative to the term's peak popularity, which is shown by the number 100 in the chart. In contrast to this increasing search for SDGs, the terms ‘Grand Challenges’ and ‘Wicked Problems’ both scored only 1 or <1 in comparison. Thus, it seems clear that while ‘Grand Challenges’ and ‘Wicked Problems’ are topics that have generated considerable research interest, the SDGs have become the key term for the global community, at least as judged by Google searches. It is also interesting to note that September 2020 has recorded a peak in interest for SDGs (the final point of the graph is for searches in early October 2020). The week September 18–25, 2020 was promoted as the ‘Global Week to #ACT4SDGS’ generating a global upsurge in interest relating to the SDGs.

Figure 2. Google Trend analyses for SDGs, grand challenges and wicked problems. Source : https://trends.google.com/trends/explore .

Although Figure 2 focuses on web searches in general, Figure 3 presents a citation analysis, based on Web of Science data, of articles that are published in management journals and specifically refer to SDGs. This clearly shows that we are not alone in recognising the importance of the SDGs for the management discipline: again, we can see rapidly accelerating interest from authors of scholarly management articles on the SDGs, with 2020 numbers, of course, not yet complete.

Figure 3. Citation Report for topic: SDGs. Citation Report graphic is derived from Clarivate Web of Science , Copyright Clarivate 2020. All rights reserved.

When we started our considerations of mechanisms to improve real research impact for management research in 2016–17, the 17 SDGs had barely touched the university sector. However, these goals encapsulated our ideas for improving real research impact by providing a broad range of goals and targets to assist researchers in focusing their research activities towards effective community and global improvement. Our work began by undertaking seminars and workshops to build awareness of the SDGs and to assist management academics in understanding how they might incorporate and apply the goals to their research activities.

Much of the early work in building awareness and commitment to the SDGs has been undertaken by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). The SDSN was set up in 2012 under the auspices of the UN Secretary-General and its missions are to promote integrated approaches to implement the SDGs and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, through education, research, policy analysis and global cooperation (SDSN-About us, 2020 ). In 2017, the Australia-Pacific arm of the SDSN produced a guide to assist universities in getting started with the SDGs (SDSN Australia/Pacific, 2017 ), and in September 2020 the full SDSN published an extensive guide to assist educational institutes incorporate the SDGs into the education components of their operations (SDSN, 2020 ).

Very recently, we have seen a few systematic reviews appearing relating to management academics and the SDGs. Pizzi, Caputo, Corvino, and Venturelli ( Reference Pizzi, Caputo, Corvino and Venturelli 2020 ) analysed 266 articles between 2012 and 2019 finding four key themes of research appearing: technological innovation; firms' contribution in developing countries; non-financial reporting; and education for SDGs. Other authors have focused on the role of management education in supporting the achievement of the SDGs: Weybrecht ( Reference Weybrecht 2017 ) spoke of the importance of management education working hand-in-hand with the business sector, whereas Ndubuka and Rey-Marmonier ( Reference Ndubuka and Rey-Marmonier 2019 ) discussed capability approaches for management education to assist in achieving the SDGs in UK business schools. However, as Pizzi et al. ( Reference Pizzi, Caputo, Corvino and Venturelli 2020 ) concluded, despite the rapidly increasing number of papers appearing, the contribution of business and management academics to the achievement of the SDGs remains very fragmented.

There have also been a number of Special Issues in business and management journals focusing on the application of the SDGs in business education and research, as well as a few full articles published that provide possible solutions to assist academics to become more fully engaged with the SDGs. As Setó-Pamies and Papaoikonomou ( Reference Setó-Pamies and Papaoikonomou 2020 : 1769) conclude in their recent Editorial for a Special Issue in Sustainability: ‘In management education, SDGs should be understood as an opportunity to accelerate the long-required changes in management curricula in order to give sustainable development the protagonism it deserves’. Again, the focus on SDGs in learning and teaching, as opposed to research, is prominent in these recent publications.

A common theme in these Special Issues, the individual journal articles, and the case studies published in the SDSN guides, is the difficulties generated by the discipline-siloed structures of most universities. As most of the complex problems inherent in the SDGs require input and work from several different disciplines, the current university structures often require academics to undertake work that may not be recognised or rewarded by their administrative managers. Thus, interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary research agendas are required. One way this may be addressed is to develop specific research centres that focus on these complex problems and can be used to create the opportunities for researchers from different disciplines to work together. As several of the case studies in the second SDSN Guide (SDSN, 2020 ) indicate, it takes strong action from the highest management levels in a university to ensure research focus on the SDGs can be developed and promoted, because of the road blocks presented by existing university organisational structures and performance measurement systems.

The first of the seven articles in this Special Issue is entitled ‘ Addressing Sustainable Development Goals for Confronting Climate Change: Insights and Summary Solutions in the Stress Stupidity System ’. In this article, Jerry Paul Sheppard and Jesse Young focus on the SDGs for climate and environmental liveability, specifically the issue of climate change. The authors pose the question: ‘Are we being stupid?’ – we (as in individuals, organisations and governments) are not only well aware of this worsening crisis, but also know what we should do to avert it, and yet we tend to take no action, or even act in a manner that exacerbates the crisis further. By relying on various examples of stupid behaviour from public and private sectors in the context of climate change, the authors build on the ‘threat-rigidity effect’ theory to develop the ‘stress-stupidity system’. This framework shows that environmental changes like climate change cause stress, which in turn triggers ‘functional stupidity’, characterised by a lack of reflection, justification and substantive reasoning. In familiar situations, routine reactions can be sufficient to address the stress, but in ambiguous situations, such as those present in the complexity of climate change, ‘identifiable stupidity’ can emerge. This consists of confident ignorance, failure to pay attention and lack of impulse control, and can lead to ‘stupidity in response’ as we are inclined to act in rigid ways even in ambiguous situations. If we are not motivated to address our stupid actions, we further intensify the stress as we respond inaptly. On the contrary, if we are motivated to address our stupidity, we can develop apt responses to the stresses, which will gradually reduce them, and as such enable us to ‘fix stupidity’. The article concludes with a useful outline of some specific suggestions of how we can fix stupidity in order to address the SDGs for climate and environmental liveability.

Some of the suggestions of how to ‘fix stupidity’ in the first paper refer to government actions to combat climate change. However, although the government may initiate legislations and guidelines, actions also need to be implemented elsewhere, such as at organisational levels. In the second article, ‘ The business – government nexus: Impact of government actions and carbon legislation on business responses to climate change in Australia ’, Sheela Sree Kumar, Bobby Banerjee, Fernanda Duarte and Ann Dadich explore the organisational level further. This article studies the responses of high carbon-emitting Australian businesses to the government action and carbon legislation, specifically the carbon tax that was introduced in 2012 and repealed in 2014 – thus, it focuses on carbon emissions, which also relates to climate change and SDG 13 (climate action). The authors report on the findings from semi-structured interviews with climate change related decision makers of 17 businesses from high-emitting industries (including chemical, mining and electricity) and two industry association personnel. The data were collected during 2012 and 2013 as the carbon tax was being implemented, to study organisations' reactions in real time. The findings showed three strategies that organisations could follow in response to the carbon tax, as well as the underlying government forces that drive organisations to these strategies. Uncertainty in global regulatory developments, inconsistent Australian climate policy and competitive threats were the main government forces that drove businesses to adopt resistive strategies, which include thwarting policy and influencing public opinion in an attempt to prevent change. Businesses that adopted reactive strategies (including preparing for the tax, protecting business interests and generating profits) were equally exposed to these negative forces, but also faced some positive forces, such as their relationships with agents, positive impacts from government actions (e.g. subsidies) and opportunity to advance research and development. Moreover, all businesses were using cooperative strategies to respond to the legislation. The negative and positive forces identified in this study will help governments to understand how their legislation and action affects the responses of businesses.

Although the high-emitting companies considered in the second article have a large role to play in achieving the climate-related SDGs, there is another group of companies, which plays a significant role in the economy but is often overlooked as a key player in the race to achieve sustainability: the small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The article ‘ The challenge of engaging with and reporting against the SDGs for SMEs such as Sydney Theatre Company ’ by Valerie Dalton focuses on the difficulties that SMEs face when trying to use various frameworks and tools that exist to support businesses in their endeavour to address the SDGs and report on their progress towards achieving them. The author outlines some of these tools, such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines, the UN Global Compact business principles, guidelines produced by consulting firms like KPMG and the SDG Compass, to name a few, and criticises the large number and complexity of these different tools, as well as their apparent focus on large, multinational corporations with extensive resources at their disposal. The article employs an in-depth retrospective case study approach to explore the sustainability journey of a single case study, the ‘Greening the Wharf’ project of the Sydney Theatre Company (STC). The data for this case study were derived from multiple interviews with key STC staff, as well as documentary and other evidence. The author used the SDG Compass (UN, 2015 ) as a tool to retrospectively re-analyse the data in an attempt to see how an SME could use it to report on the SDGs. The findings suggest that the tool is overly complex, lacks clarity and requires extensive levels of detail, which would require a prohibitively large amount of time, background knowledge and effort to record and report on – all of these are resources that SMEs typically do not have in abundance. Dalton concludes by calling for a simpler tool, which SMEs could apply to their own sustainability journey, so that this important group of businesses can also better contribute to the achievement of the SDGs.

Although SMEs have problems trying to apply the complex guidelines produced by the UN and other agencies, social enterprises are frequently initiated to address a particular issue relevant to the SDGs. In ‘ ‘Wicked’ solutions for ‘wicked’ problems: Responsible innovations in social enterprises for sustainable development ’, Nadeera Ranabahu stresses the importance of social enterprises, set up to address wicked social problems and deliver social impact, in the endeavour to achieve the SDGs. These enterprises are often required to be innovative in order to achieve their mission, but innovation can be costly. This fourth article relies on the conceptual framework of responsible innovation (Stilgoe, Owen, & Macnaughten, Reference Stilgoe, Owen and Macnaughten 2013 ) to study how social enterprises use responsible innovation practices to achieve the SDGs. Applying a qualitative case study methodology, the author used a wide range of multi-media secondary data to develop rich descriptions of the innovation journeys of three award winning social enterprises, which all make use of innovative technology to address one or more wicked social problems. The findings suggest that social enterprises start with the intention of addressing one or only a small number of SDGs, but as they grow, they make deliberate responsible innovation decisions as they expand their geographical coverage as well as product/service portfolio, which allows them to increase their social goals and address additional SDGs. The article contains rich explanations of the case companies' application of the responsible innovation dimensions: anticipation of positive and negative consequences of the innovation; self-aware reflexivity on actions, values and responsibilities; inclusion and deliberation through stakeholder involvement; responsiveness to environmental changes; and management of knowledge in- and outside the organisation. In conclusion, the article presents a model of responsible innovation in social enterprises by depicting the four interrelated dimensions as an expanding spiral that demonstrates not only the dynamic nature of these dimensions, but also their collective contribution to social enterprises' ability to increase their social impact.

In our fifth paper of the Special Issue, Olav Muurlink and Stephanie Macht have considered another important organisational type in the achievement of the SDGs, particularly in developing nations: the Non-Government Organisation (NGO). The article entitled ‘ Managing (out) corruption in NGOs: A case study from the Bangladesh delta ’ considers the complex and pervasive wicked problem of corruption. This article presents a rich description of a single, longitudinal ethnographic case study of how one Bangladeshi NGO, which had suffered from deep-rooted corruption since inception around three decades ago, has managed to address and ultimately eradicate corruption in its own organisation. The authors demonstrate that NGOs are not safe from corrupt behaviour although much literature suggests that they are the solution to corruption, especially in countries where corruption is the norm, rather than the exception. The conceptual framework of the article focuses on the Corruption Triangle theory (Byars, Reference Byars 2009 ), which suggests that for corruption to occur, the following three elements have to be present: opportunity, motivation and rational decision to commit the corrupt act. By recounting the process that the first author (who is the ethnographer in this article, as well as the head of country of the case study NGO) followed to fight this entrenched corruption, this article highlights that this wicked problem can be addressed through indirect interference with one of the Corruption Triangle elements: opportunity. Through improved information channels for stakeholders, the NGO was able to interrupt the opportunity to carry out corrupt acts, thus demonstrating that even complex problems like corruption can be addressed through simple, sustainable interventions.

In addition to governments, high-emitting companies, SMEs, social enterprises and NGOs, our sixth article considers the important role of academia in achieving the SDGs. In ‘ The wicked problem of measuring real-world research impact: Using sustainable development goals (SDGs) and targets in academia ’, authored by Geoffrey Chapman, Ashley Cully, Jennifer Kosiol, Stephanie Macht, Ross Chapman, Anneke Fitzgerald and Frank Gertsen, the authors argue that researchers have a civic duty to ensure that their work has valuable impact for the ‘real world’. This sixth article deals with the difficulties and problems of measuring research quality and research impact in academia. Traditionally research ‘quality’ is measured with the help of more than two dozen diverse bibliometric indices and metrics, such as the h -index or the journal impact factor. The authors criticise these indices, particularly when used as performance measures, as they encourage research for the sake of publishing, with impact purely in the academic world. Of course, research should add value to society, economy, individuals and other research end-users beyond academia and contribute significantly to addressing the big, wicked problems in the world. The article moves on to propose the use of the UN SDGs, and their associated targets, as an alternative, real-world relevant measure of research impact. The authors then report on the findings from world café format discussions among 51 management researchers who were faced with the question of how to measure research impact, who the research end-user is, how alignment with SDGs could be operationalised in academia, and what role network organisations such as ANZAM could play in achieving such alignment. The common consensus among the world café participants was that: (i) the use of SDGs for measuring research impact had potential but requires more awareness of SDGs; (ii) academia needs to collaborate with industry to a much greater extent; (iii) the SDG targets and the measures of impact need to be more clearly defined and communicated and (iv) individual and institutional research agendas and performance measures need to be more closely aligned to the SDGs and their targets.

Although the sixth article looks at how research quality and impact measures need to be modified to better address the SDGs with a particular emphasis on management research, the final paper considers the role of management researchers in interdisciplinary research addressing climate change, one of the key global issues addressed by the SDGs. In ‘ The wicked problem of climate change and interdisciplinary research: Tracking management scholarship's contribution ’, Franz Wohlgezogen, Angela McCabe, Tom Osegowitsch and Joeri Mol view climate change as a wicked problem that needs to be tackled through the collaboration of multiple disciplines, including management. Through extensive bibliometric analysis of published journal articles over the last four decades, the authors identified that management researchers are increasingly concerned with climate change, and often make reference to climate change knowledge from other disciplines, including science. However, the authors find that the reverse situation is not the case. That is, management researchers' impact on other disciplines is very limited, as only very few publications in Nature and Science , the top tier interdisciplinary journals dealing with climate change, cite management research. It is argued that this should change because the management discipline has great potential to provide valuable contributions to interdisciplinary research on climate change: it can further our understanding of climate change, support the development of responses to climate change and add methodological contributions. This article outlines some specific ways in which management research can join this debate, for instance, by contributing research on change management, strategic responses to climate change, consumer and organisational behaviour and sustainable business practices, just to name a few. The authors tentatively suggest that researchers in other disciplines may not consider management research particularly relevant for climate change debates and recommend that management scholars need to find a way of better demonstrating the value and relevance of their research to other disciplines. Specifically, management scholars, who work in the climate change space, should promote their work better, and actively seek out collaborations outside their own discipline so as to break down existing disciplinary silos, biases and prejudices, to be able to make the most of the myriad of benefits that can be gained from interdisciplinary research.

There is a real opportunity for the management discipline to quickly mobilise new initiatives to support societal responses to COVID-19 and recovery. It may require re-assessing the usefulness of single metrics (such as GDP), and perhaps a start to painting a fuller picture through harnessing stories from businesses all over the world creating many data points and giving a clearer picture of lived experiences to ensure meaningful (research) impact. Collecting data at lower levels (sub-national data) is more appropriate for certain SDG targets (van Zanten & van Tulder, Reference van Zanten and van Tulder 2020 ). Although many benefits of economic activities at the company-level can be quantified in terms of GDP (i.e. the value added delivered by an economic activity), its externalities, such as the adverse effects on climate, ecosystems and human health, are not priced. Therefore, van Zanten and van Tulder ( Reference van Zanten and van Tulder 2020 : 12) pose a challenge to business scholars: ‘what can replace GDP and provide quantifications of impacts of economic activities at the level of companies?’

Other potential areas for exploring renewed innovation may include: employee well-being initiatives; business risk and crisis management; supply chain and operations management and logistics; sustainable financing; business planning process innovation, business resilience, branding and so forth. These research opportunities have the potential to turn current challenges into meaningful change and real research impact.

According to participants at the April 2020 SDSN/ACTS (Australian Campuses Towards Sustainability) forum some things particularly management scholars can do are: (1) translating relevant management research quickly and communicate this to government and others for management decision-making; (2) helping facilitate a larger discussion on what a sustainable development-led recovery looks like and insights from what is already happening, and providing them into the public policy sphere; (3) helping develop and re-skill the workforce to support recovery from the crisis and, (4) working collaboratively to support each other and strengthen the collective message (SDSN Australia/Pacific, 2020 ). This can only be done from inter- and multi-disciplinary points of view, using partnerships and communication channels to bring research, evidence and practices to policy making. This was also acknowledged by who state that there is a real need for management academics to work together towards holistic solutions to SDG problems, as well as the need for a stronger engagement with industry to bridge the research-practice gap that persists.

But how can we equip people to respond to and harness the challenges and opportunities? This crisis has shown how vital it is that all learners acquire the knowledge, skills and mindsets to solve complex societal and management decision making problems. This is the essence of management education. Many universities undertake this in a niche way, but the crisis has shown how important it is to mainstream this. Responsible Management Education (RME) as a field is still eclectic in their view on purpose and goals of management education as a driver for change (Storey, Killian, & O'Regan, Reference Storey, Killian and O'Regan 2017 ). However, working towards the UN SDGs 2030 may bring the field somewhat more together, where divergence is viewed as a strength. In this disorderly space, the emergence of the SDGs may help management educators realise the opportunities available.

Therefore, the way forward is for universities to ensure business and management courses incorporate the SDGs at all levels of the curriculum, reduce the focus on outdated measures of research quality in their performance measurement systems and provide real leadership in both their own operations and in the interactions with the wider community by building their strategic plans around the SDGs. Accreditation bodies may well start to focus on social responsibility as an underlying value and can assist with shifting paradigms within business education. For example, the assurance of learning process of AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) can be used to comprehensively map responsibility and sustainability through programmes that include this as a programme-goal or graduate attribute (Storey, Killian, & O'Regan, Reference Storey, Killian and O'Regan 2017 ). The management discipline will continue to have a critical role in supporting businesses and society through our research, teaching, operations and leadership. Management scholars need to seize the opportunities for innovative management research and education initiatives focusing on the SDG targets, resetting for growth in the new post-COVID ‘normal’.

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• Volume 26, Special Issue 6
• Stephanie A. Macht (a1) , Ross L. Chapman (a1) and Janna Anneke Fitzgerald (a2)
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/jmo.2020.36

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Impact of the Sustainable Development Goals on the academic research agenda. A scientometric analysis

Antonio Sianes

1 Research Institute on Policies for Social Transformation, Universidad Loyola Andalucía, Córdoba, Spain

Alejandro Vega-Muñoz

2 Public Policy Observatory, Universidad Autónoma de Chile, Santiago, Chile

Pilar Tirado-Valencia

3 Department of Finance and Accounting, Universidad Loyola Andalucía, Córdoba, Spain

Antonio Ariza-Montes

4 Social Matters Research Group, Universidad Loyola Andalucía, Córdoba, Spain

Associated Data

All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.

Today, global challenges such as poverty, inequality, and sustainability are at the core of the academic debate. This centrality has only increased since the transition from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), whose scope is to shift the world on to a path of resilience focused on promoting sustainable development. The main purpose of this paper is to develop a critical yet comprehensive scientometric analysis of the global academic production on the SDGs, from its approval in 2015 to 2020, conducted using Web of Science (WoS) database. Despite it being a relatively short period of time, scholars have published more than five thousand research papers in the matter, mainly in the fields of green and sustainable sciences. The attained results show how prolific authors and schools of knowledge are emerging, as key topics such as climate change, health and the burden diseases, or the global governance of these issues. However, deeper analyses also show how research gaps exist, persist and, in some cases, are widening. Greater understanding of this body of research is needed, to further strengthen evidence-based policies able to support the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the achievement of the SDGs.

1. Introduction

1.1. from the millennium agenda to the 2030 agenda and the sustainable development goals (sdgs).

To track the origins of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, we must recall the Millennium Agenda, which was the first global plan focused on fighting poverty and its more extreme consequences [ 1 ]. Approved in 2000, its guiding principle was that northern countries should contribute to the development of southern states via Official Development Assistance (ODA) flows. The commitment was to reach 0.7% of donors’ gross domestic product [ 2 ] to reduce poverty by half by 2015. The relative failure to reach this goal and the consolidation of a discourse of segregation between northern and southern countries [ 3 ] opened the door to strong criticism of the Millennium Agenda. Therefore, as 2015 approached, there were widespread calls for a profound reformulation of the system [ 4 ].

The world in 2015 was very different from that in the early 2000s. Globalization had reached every corner of the world, generating development convergence between countries but increasing inequalities within countries [ 5 , 6 ]. Increasing interest in the environmental crisis and other global challenges, such as the relocation of work and migration flows, consolidated a new approach to development and the need of a more encompassed agenda [ 7 ]. This new agenda was conceived after an integrating process that involved representatives from governments, cooperation agencies, nongovernmental organisations, global business, and academia. The willingness of the 2030 Agenda to ‘leave no one behind’ relies on this unprecedented global commitment by the international community [ 8 ].

As a result of this process, in 2015, the United Nations General Assembly formally adopted the document “Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” [ 9 ], later known as the 2030 Agenda. This new global agenda is an all-comprising strategy that seeks to inform and orient public policies and private interventions in an extensive range of fields, from climate change to smart cities and from labour markets to birth mortality, among many others.

The declared scope of the Agenda is to shift the world on to a path of resilience focused on promoting sustainable development. To do so, the 2030 Agenda operates under the guidance of five principles, formally known as the ‘5 Ps’: people, planet, prosperity, peace, and partnerships [ 10 ]. With these pivotal concepts in mind, the Agenda has established a total of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 specific targets to be pursued in a 15-year period, which reflects the scale and profound ambition of this new Agenda.

The SDGs do not only address what rich countries should do for the poor but rather what all countries should do together for the global well-being of this and future generations [ 4 ]. Thus, the SDGs cover a much broader range of issues than their predecessors, the Millennium Development Goals [ 11 ], and are intended to be universal on the guidance towards a new paradigm of sustainable development that the international community has been demanding since the 1992 Earth Summit [ 7 , 12 , 13 ].

Despite this potential, some criticise their vagueness, weakness, and unambitious character. Fukuda-Parr [ 14 ], see weaknesses on the simplicity of the SDGs, which can lead to a very narrow conception that reduces the integral concept of development. The issue of measurement is also problematic; for some researchers, the quantification of objectives not only reduces their complexity, but leads to them being carried out without considering the interdependencies between the objectives [ 12 , 13 ]. Other authors have identified difficulties associated with specifying some of the less visible, intangible aspects of their qualitative nature such as inclusive development and green growth [ 14 , 15 ]. Finally, Stafford-Smith et al. [ 16 ] state that their successful implementation also requires paying greater attention to the links across sectors, across societal actors and between and among low-, medium-, and high-income countries.

Despite these criticisms, the SDGs have undoubtedly become the framework for what the Brundtland report defined as our common future. Unlike conventional development agendas that focus on a restricted set of dimensions, the SDGs provide a holistic and multidimensional view of development [ 17 ]. In this line, Le Blanc [ 12 ] concludes that the SDGs constitute a system with a global perspective; because they consider the synergies and trade-offs between the different issues involved in sustainable development, and favour comprehensive thinking and policies.

1.2. Towards a categorization of the SDGs

There is an underlying lack of unanimity in the interpretation of the SDGs, which has given rise to alternative approaches that allow categorizing the issues involved in their achievement without losing sight of the integral vision of sustainable development [ 15 , 18 – 23 ]. However, such categorization of the SDGs makes it possible to approach them in a more holistic and integrated way, focusing on the issues that underlie sustainable development and on trying to elucidate their connections.

Among the many systematization proposals, and following the contributions of Hajer et al. [ 19 ], four connected perspectives can strengthen the universal relevance of the SDGs: a) ‘planetary boundaries’ that emphasize the urgency of addressing environmental concerns and calling on governments to take responsibility for global public goods; b) ‘The safe and just operating space’ to highlight the interconnectedness of social and environmental issues and their consequences for the redistribution of wealth and human well-being; c) ‘The energetic society’ that avoids the plundering of energy resources; and d) ‘green competition’ to stimulate innovation and new business practices that limit the consumption of resources.

Planetary boundaries demand international policies that coordinate efforts to avoid overexploitation of the planet [ 24 ]. Issues such as land degradation, deforestation, biodiversity loss and natural resource overexploitation exacerbate poverty and deepen inequalities [ 21 , 25 – 27 ]. These problems are further compounded by the increasing impacts of climate change with clear ramifications for natural systems and societies around the globe [ 21 , 28 ].

A safe and just operating space implies social inclusivity that ensures equity principles for sharing opportunities for development [ 15 , 29 ]. Furthermore, it requires providing equitable access to effective and high-quality preventive and curative care that reduces global health inequalities [ 30 , 31 ] and promotes human well-being. Studies such as that of Kruk et al. [ 32 ] analyse the reforms needed in health systems to reduce mortality and the systemic changes necessary for high-quality care.

An energetic society demands global, regional and local production and consumption patterns as demands for energy and natural resources continue to increase, providing challenges and opportunities for poverty reduction, economic development, sustainability and social cohesion [ 21 ].

Finally, green competition establishes limits to the consumption of resources, engaging both consumers and companies [ 22 ] and redefining the relationship between firms and their suppliers in the supply chain [ 33 ]. These limits must also be introduced into life in cities, fostering a new urban agenda [ 34 , 35 ]. Poor access to opportunities and services offered by urban centres (a function of distance, transport infrastructure and spatial distribution) is a major barrier to improved livelihoods and overall development [ 36 ].

The diversification of development issues has opened the door to a wide range of new realities that must be studied under the guiding principles of the SDGs, which involve scholars from all disciplines. As Saric et al. [ 37 ] claimed, a shift in academic research is needed to contribute to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda. The identification of critical pathways to success based on sound research is needed to inform a whole new set of policies and interventions aimed at rendering the SDGs both possible and feasible [ 38 ].

1.3. The relevance and impact of the SDGs on academic research

In the barely five years since their approval, the SDGs have proven the ability to mobilize the scientific community and offer an opportunity for researchers to bring interdisciplinary knowledge to facilitate the successful implementation of the 2030 Agenda [ 21 ]. The holistic vision of development considered in the SDGs has impacted very diverse fields of knowledge, such as land degradation processes [ 25 , 26 ], health [ 39 ], energy [ 40 ] and tourism [ 41 ], as well as a priori further disciplines such as earth observation [ 42 ] and neurosurgery [ 43 ]. However, more importantly, the inevitable interdependencies, conflicts and linkages between the different SDGs have also emerged in the analyses, highlighting ideas such as the need for systemic thinking that considers the spatial and temporal connectivity of the SDGs, which calls for multidisciplinary knowledge. According to Le Blanc [ 12 ], the identification of the systemic links between the objectives can be a valuable undertaking for the scientific community in the coming years and sustainable development.

Following this line, several scientific studies have tried to model the relationships between the SDGs in an attempt to clarify the synergies between the objectives, demonstrating their holistic nature [ 12 , 17 , 20 , 44 , 45 ]. This knowledge of interdependencies can bring out difficulties and risks, or conversely the drivers, in the implementation of the SDGs, which will facilitate their achievement [ 22 ]. In addition, it will allow proposing more transformative strategies to implement the SDG agenda, since it favours an overall vision that is opposed to the false illusion that global problems can be approached in isolation [ 19 ].

The lack of prioritisation of the SDGs has been one of the issues raised regarding their weakness, which should also be addressed by academics. For example, Gupta and Vegelin [ 15 ] analyse the dangers of inclusive development prioritising economic issues, relegating social or ecological inclusivity to the background, or the relational aspects of inclusivity that guarantee the existence of laws, policies and global rules that favour equal opportunities. Holden et al. [ 46 ] suggest that this prioritisation should be established according to three moral criteria: the satisfaction of human needs, social equity and respect for environmental limits. These principles must be based on ethical values that, according to Burford et al. [ 47 ], constitute the missing pillar of sustainability. In this way, the ethical imperatives of the SDGs and the values implicit in the discourses on sustainable development open up new possibilities for transdisciplinary research in the social sciences [ 46 , 47 ].

Research on SDG indicators has also been relevant in the academic world, as they offer an opportunity to replace conventional progress metrics such as gross domestic product (GDP) with other metrics more consistent with the current paradigm of development and social welfare that takes into account such aspects as gender equality, urban resilience and governance [ 20 , 48 ].

The study of the role of certain development agents, including companies, universities or supranational organisations, also opens up new areas of investigation for researchers. Some studies have shown the enthusiastic acceptance of the SDGs by companies [ 22 , 49 ]. For Bebbington and Unerman [ 50 ], the study of the role of organisations in achieving the SDGs should be centred around three issues: challenging definitions of entity boundaries to understand their full impacts, introducing new conceptual frameworks for analysis of the context within which organisations operate and re-examining the conceptual basis of justice, responsibility and accountability. On the other hand, the academic community has recognized that knowledge and education are two basic pillars for the transition towards sustainable development, so it may also be relevant to study the responsibility of higher education in achieving the SDGs [ 47 , 50 ]. Institutional sustainability and governance processes are issues that should be addressed in greater depth through research [ 47 ].

Finally, some authors have highlighted the role of information technologies (ICT) in achieving the SDGs [ 23 ] and their role in addressing inequality or vulnerability to processes such as financial exclusion [ 51 ], which opens up new avenues for research.

Despite this huge impact of the SDGs on academic research, to the best of our knowledge, an overall analysis of such an impact to understand its profoundness and capillarity is missing in the literature. To date, reviews have focused on the implementation of specific SDGs [ 52 – 61 ], on specific topics and collectives [ 62 – 70 ], on traditional fields of knowledge, now reconsidered in light of the SDGs [ 71 – 73 ] and on contributions from specific regions or countries [ 74 , 75 ]. By relying on scientometric techniques and data mining analyses, this paper collects and analyses the more than 5,000 papers published on the SDGs to pursue this challenging goal and fill this knowledge gap.

This article aims to provide a critical review of the scientific research on SDGs, a concept that has emerged based on multiple streams of thinking and has begun to be consolidated as of 2015. As such, global references on this topic are identified and highlighted to manage pre-existing knowledge to understand relationships among researchers and with SDG dimensions to enhance the presently dispersed understanding of this subject and its areas of further development. A scientometric meta-analysis of publications on SDGs is conducted to achieve this objective. Mainstream journals from the Web of Science (WoS) are used to identify current topics, the most involved journals, the most prolific authors, and the thematic areas around which the current academic SDG debate revolves.

Once Section 1 has revised on the related literature to accomplish the main objective, Section 2 presents the research methodology. Section 3 presents the main results obtained, and Section 4 critically discusses these results. The conclusion and the main limitations of the study are presented in Section 5.

2. Materials and methods

In methodological terms, this research applies scientometrics as a meta-analytical means to study the evolution of documented scientific knowledge on the Sustainable Development Goals [ 76 – 81 ], taking as a secondary source of information academic contributions (i.e. articles, reviews, editorials, etc.) indexed in the Web of Science (WoS). To ensure that only peer-reviewed contributions authored by individual researchers are retrieved and that such publications have a worldwide prestige assessment, all of them should be published on journals indexed in the Journal Citation Report (JCR), either as part of the Sciences Citation Index Expanded or the Social Sciences Citation Index [ 82 – 84 ].

Following the recommendations of previous studies [ 85 ], it was decided to apply the next search vector from 2015 to 2020 to achieve the research objectives TS = (Sustainable NEAR/0 Development NEAR/0 Goals), which allows the extraction of data with 67 fields for each article registered in WoS.

As the first step, to give meaning to subsequent analyses, we tested the presence of exponential growth in the production of documented knowledge that allows a continuous renewal of knowledge [ 76 , 86 ].

As a second action, given the recent nature of the subject studied, it is of interest to map the playing field [ 87 ] using VOSviewer software version 1.6.16 [ 88 ], to know which topics are most addressed in the matter of SDGs. This analysis seeks an approach, both through the concentration of Keyword Plus® [ 89 ] and by analysing the references used as input in the production of knowledge, which can be treated as cocitations, coupling-citations and cross-citations [ 90 ], using the h-index, in citation terms, as discriminant criteria in the selection of articles [ 91 – 93 ]. This methodology will allow us to establish production, impact and relationship metrics [ 80 , 85 , 87 , 94 , 95 ].

Finally, it is of interest to explore the possible concentrations that may arise. Using Lotka’s Law, we estimated the possible prolific authors and their areas of work in SDGs, and using Bradford’s Law, we conducted a search of a possible adjustment to a geometric series of the concentration zones of journals and therefore a potential nucleus where a profuse discussion on SDGs is taking place [ 96 – 100 ].

3.1. Configuration of the academic production on SDGs

The results present a total of 5,281 articles for a period of six years (2015–2020) in 1,135 journals, with over 60% of these documents published in the last two years. The total of articles is distributed among authors affiliated with 7,418 organisations from 181 countries/regions, giving thematic coverage to 183 categories of the Journal Citation Report-Web of Science (JCR-WoS). Table 1 shows the distribution among the top ten JCR-WoS categories, highlighting the prevalence of journals indexed in green and environmental sciences and, thus, in the Science Index-Expanded.

3.2. Existence of research critical mass

Fig 1 shows the regression model for the period 2015–2020, the last year with complete records consolidated in the Web of Science. The results obtained show significant growth in the number of studies on SDGs, with an R 2 adjustment greater than 96%. The exponential nature of the model shows that a ‘critical mass’ is consolidating around the research on this topic, as proposed by the Law of Exponential Growth of Science over Time [ 76 ], which in some way gives meaning to this research and to obtaining derived results.

3.3. Establishment of concentrations

In accordance with Lotka’s Law, 22,336 authors were identified of the 5,281 articles under study. From this author set, 136 (≈sqrt (22,336)) are considered prolific authors with a contribution to nine or more works. However, a second restriction, even more demanding, is to identify those prolific authors who are also prolific in contemporary terms. Although SDG studies are recent, the growth production rates are extremely high. As previously shown, for the period 2015–2020, 64% of the publications are concentrated between 2019–2020. Based on this second restriction, for 3,400 articles of the 5,281 articles published in 2019 and 2020, and a total of 15,120 authors, only eight prolific authors manage to sustain a publication number that equals or exceeds nine articles. These authors are listed and characterized in Table 2 .

The analysis shown in Table 2 highlights the University of Washington’s participation in health issues with Murray and Hay (coauthors of eight articles in the period 2019–2020), who are also important in the area of health for the prolific authors Yaya and Bhutta. The environmental SDGs mark a strong presence with Abhilash, Leal-Filho and Kalin. The affiliation of Abhilsash (Banaras Hindu University) is novel, as it is not part of the classic world core in knowledge production that is largely concentrated in the United States and Europe. It is worth noting that other prolific authors belong to nonmainstream knowledge production world areas, such as Russia or Pakistan. Professor Alola also deserves mention; not only is he the only contemporary prolific author producing in the area of economics, but he is also producing knowledge in Turkey.

In the same way, at the journal level, the potential establishment of concentration areas and determination of a deep discussion nucleus are analysed using Bradford’s law.

With a percentage error of 0.6%, between the total journal number and the total journal number estimated by the Bradford series, the database shows a core of 18 journals (2%) where one in three articles published are concentrated (see Table 3 ).

Regarding the number of contributions by journal, Sustainability has the largest number of studies on SDGs, in which 689 (13%) of the 5,281 articles studied are concentrated. The Journal of Cleaner Production, indexed to WoS categories related to Environmental SDGs, is the second most prominent journal, with 2.7% participation of the articles (147). Both journals are followed by the multidisciplinary journal Plos One, with 2.2% of the total dataset. In terms of impact factor, the 60 points of the health journal The Lancet are superlative in the whole, which in the other cases ranges between 2.000 and 7.246. As shown in Table 4 , we have developed a “Prominence ranking” by weighting article production by impact factor. This metric shows The Lancet, with only 40 articles on SDGs, as the most relevant journal, followed by Sustainability, which becomes relevant due to the high number of publications (689) despite an impact factor of 2.576. These journals are followed by the Journal of Cleaner Production with 147 articles and an impact factor of 7.246.

3.4. Thematic coverage

Concerning the thematic coverage, Fig 2A and 2B show a diversity of 7,003 Keyword Plus® (KWP), consistently connected to a total of 7,141 KWP assigned by Clarivate as metadata to the set of 5,281 articles studied, which presents a strong concentration in a small number of terms (red colour in the heat map generated with VOSviewer version 1.6.16).

a) Keywords Plus® heatmap and b) heat map zoom to highlight the highest concentration words, data source WoS, 2020.

Based on this result, a concentration sphere with 85 KWP (= sqrt (7,141)) is established according to Zipf’s Law, which is presented in 50 or more articles out of the total of 5,281. Moreover, a central concentration sphere of 9 KWPs (= sqrt (85)) can be found, with keywords present in a range of 178 to 346 articles out of a total of 5,281. These nine pivotal keywords are all connected in terms of co-occurrence (associated by Clarivate two or more to the same article) and within papers with an average number of citations in WoS that vary from 9.27 to 16.69, as shown in Table 5 . The nine most prominent key words in relation to the study of the SDGs are health, climate change, management, impact, challenges, governance, systems, policy and framework. These terms already suggest some of the themes around which the debate and research in this area revolves.

The prominence of these keywords is obtained by combining the level of occurrence and average citations (see Table 5 ): on the one hand, the occurrence or number of articles with which the KWP is associated (e.g., Management, 346) and, on the other hand, the average citations presented by the articles associated with these words (e.g., Framework. 9.27). The final score (prominence) mixes both concepts, given the product of the occurrences and the average citations of each KWP in proportion to the mean values (e.g., (330 * 16.69)/(246 * 11.96) = 1.9).

3.5. Relations within the academic contributions

The coupling-citation analysis using VOSviewer identifies the 5,281 articles under study, of which only those found in the h-index as a whole have been considered (the h-index in the database is 81, as there are 81 articles cited 81 or more times). The bibliographic coupling analysis found consistent connections in only 73 of these articles, gathered in seven clusters. Such clusters and unconnected articles are represented in Fig 3 .

Data source WoS. 2020.

In simple terms, discrimination belonging to one cluster or another depends on the total link number that an article has with the other 80 articles based on the use of the common references. Table 6 specifies the articles belonging to the same publication cluster in relation to Fig 3 .

Bibliographic coupling analysis can also be used to link the seven clusters that use common references with the field document title (TI), publication name (SO), Keyword Plus-KWP (ID), and research areas (SC). This allows the identification of the main topics of each cluster. As shown in Table 7 , cluster 1 (red) concerns environmental and public affairs; cluster 2 (green), health; cluster 3 (blue), economics; cluster 4 (yellow), health–the burden of disease; cluster 5 (violet), economics–Kuznets curve; cluster 6 (light blue), energy; and cluster 7 (orange), soil—land.

3.6. Outstanding contributions in the field

The cocitation analysis identified a total of 232,081 references cited by the 5,281 articles under study. It suggests taking as references to review those that present 44 or more occurrences in the database (232,081/5,281). This method results in 34 articles that have been used as main inputs for the scientific production under analysis, cited between 44 and 504 times. A result worth highlighting is that one in three of these documents corresponds to reports from international organisations, such as the United Nations (UN), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), World Bank Group (WB) or World Health Organization (WHO). However, it is also possible to identify 21 peer-reviewed scientific contributions. These papers are identified in detail in Table 8 .

The cocitation analysis yields the degree of relationship of these 21 most cited research articles. It is how such references have been used simultaneously in the same article. Fig 4 displays this information (to help readers, it has also been included in Table 8 , centrality in 21 column).

According to the relationship level in the most cited article’s selection, the graph ( Fig 3 ) has been clustered in three colours: cluster 1 in red colour groups the highest articles proportion (9) published between 2013 and 2017 in 7 journals. These journals present an impact factor (IF) quite heterogeneous, with values ranging from 2.576 (Sustainability) to 60.39 (Lancet) and indexed in one or more of the following WoS categories: Environmental Sciences (4 journals), Green & Sustainable Science & Technology (4), Environmental Studies (2), Development Studies (1), Medicine, General & Internal (1), Multidisciplinary Sciences (1) and Regional & Urban Planning (1). Three of these articles are cited 130–150 times in the 5,281-article dataset and, at the same time, show a connection centrality of 95–100% with the other 20 articles in the graph, implying a high level of cocitation. The other two clusters group six articles each. The articles of cluster 2 (green colour) are included in a widespread WoS category set: Environmental Sciences (3 journals), Geosciences, Multidisciplinary (2), Ecology (1), Economics (1), Energy & Fuels (1), Environmental Studies (1), Green & Sustainable Science & Technology (1), Materials Science, Multidisciplinary (1), Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences (1) and Multidisciplinary Sciences (1). The research of Nilsson [ 101 ] was used as a reference in 176 of the 5,281 articles under study, showing a centrality of 100%. This great connection level is also featured in another less cited article [ 17 ] published in Earth’s Future. Finally, cluster 3 (blue) highlights six articles concentrated in three highly cited journals in the WoS categories: Medicine, General & Internal (Lancet) and Multidisciplinary Sciences (Nature and Science), whose IFs range from 41.9 to 60.4. In general, they are articles less connected (cocited) to the set of 21, with centralities of 30–90%. Two of these articles were referenced 140 times or more, although one was published in 2009. Thus, cluster 3 concentrates the references mainly in journals on environmental issues with scientific-technological orientation, as well as classic and high-impact WoS journals (The Lancet, Nature and Science). It is worth noting that some of these top journals may not be listed in Table 4 as they are not included in the Bradford’s nucleus, due to their comparatively low number of contributions published.

Finally, continuing with the thematic study, a cross-citation analysis was developed. Considering only the 81 articles that are part of the h-index of the total set of 5,821 articles under study, the citations that are presented among this elite article set are explored using VosViewer. The cross-citation analysis detects existing relationships between 37 of these 81 articles. Once the directionality of the citations has been analysed, a directed temporal graph is generated using Pajek 64 version 5.09, which is presented in Fig 5 .

Fig 5 shows how these 37 highly cited articles are related to each other (the number after the name is the publication year), considering that some of these articles are cited as references in other articles in this set. The relationships between the articles in Fig 5 are complex and should be understood under a temporal sequence logic in the citation between two articles. However, some trends can be highlighted.

On the one hand, some contributions stand out for their centrality. Lim et al. [ 102 ] is connected with eight of the 37 articles (21.6%) on citing relationships, as is Fullman et al. [ 27 ], which relates to seven of the 37 articles (18.9%). Both authors researched health issues and are also coauthors of nine articles of the dataset under study. On the other hand, according to the SDG segmentation proposed, Hajer et al. [ 19 ] and Le Blanc [ 12 ] are recognized as seminal articles in social SDGs, since they contribute to the production of other subsequent articles in the set of 37. On the other hand, in health matters, seminal articles are Norheim et al. [ 103 ] and You et al. [ 104 ], two articles published in The Lancet whose citations also contribute to the production of the set introduced as Fig 5 .

4. Discussion

The main purpose of this paper was to develop a critical and comprehensive scientometric analysis of the global academic literature on the SDGs from 2015 to 2020, conducted using the WoS database. The attained results have made it possible to comprehend and communicate to the scientific community the current state of the debate on the SDGs, thus offering insights for future lines of research.

To achieve the objectives, the present study analysed a broad spectrum of 5,281 articles published in 1,135 WoS journals. A first aspect that is striking is the great diversity of topics addressed in these studies, which reflects the multidimensionality of the SDGs. Despite this, more than half of the articles are concentrated in two JCR-WoS categories (Environmental Sciences and Green Sustainable Science Technology), a percentage that exceeds 80% if the categories Environmental Studies and Public Environmental Occupational Health are added. Thus, on the one hand, the size of the body of literature and the broad spectrum of topics more than covers the four perspectives of analysis that are relevant in research on the SDGs, according to Hajer et al. [ 19 ]: planetary boundaries, the safe and just operating space, the energetic society and, last, green competition. However, on the other hand, results also highlight a strong focus on the environmental aspects of the SDGs, which undoubtedly concentrate the most contributions.

The Sustainable Development Goals constitute an area of research that has experienced exponential scientific growth, a tendency already suggested by previous studies [ 81 , 105 ], thus complying with the fundamental principles of Price’s law [ 76 ], which suggests the need for this exponential growth to manifest a continuous renewal of knowledge on the subject under study. The results of this study highlight a significant increase in the number of articles published in the last two years, given that six out of ten articles were published in 2019 or 2020. This tendency confirms how the SDGs continue to arouse great interest in the scientific community and that the debate on the interpretation of sustainable development is still open and very present in academia.

The variety of knowledge areas from which science can approach the SDGs demonstrates the different avenues that exist to address different research questions and their multidimensional nature, as anticipated by Pradhan et al. [ 17 ], a dispersion not far from the traditional fields of knowledge or the conventional dimensions of sustainability. Investigating the reasons for this dispersion in academic research on the SDGs may be a topic of great interest, as anticipated by Burford et al. [ 47 ] and Le Blanc [ 12 ], since understanding the phenomenon of development can only be achieved if the main challenges, both current and future, can be viewed holistically and comprehensively. Along these lines, Imaz and Eizagirre [ 106 ] state that the complexity of the study of the SDGs is undoubtedly marked by their aspiration for universality, by their broad scope encompassing the three basic pillars of sustainable development (economic development, environmental sustainability and social inclusion) and by their desire for integration, motivated by the complexity of the challenges and by the countless interlinkages and interdependencies.

This natural multidimensionality of the SDGs calls for strong cooperation and collaboration between researchers, universities, and countries. In this sense, the scientometric analysis provides good news, as more than a hundred prolific authors (defined as those authors who have published nine or more articles on this topic) have been identified, although these are reduced to eight in contemporary terms (2019 or 2020). This select group of eight authors who lead research and publishing on the SDGs (sometimes with dual or triple affiliations) produce knowledge for universities and research centres both in the global north and the global south: Canada, the U.S., the UK, Germany, Pakistan, Turkey, India, Benin, Russia and Cyprus. The protagonist role played by research institutes in countries in the north has already been acknowledged by previous studies [ 81 , 105 ]. However, the emergence of top scholars producing academic knowledge from developing countries is a more recent tendency, which underscores the pertinence of this analysis.

A closer look at the academic and research curricula of these authors leads to the conclusion that the study of the SDGs does not constitute a final field of research at present. These researchers come from very heterogeneous disciplines, so their approach to the SDGs is also multidisciplinary. To illustrate it with an example, the most cited article by Professor Abhilash of Banaras Hindu University (the most published contemporary prolific author along with Christopher Murray of the University of Washington), with 363 WoS citations in February 2021 alone, is on the use and application of pesticides in India.

In more concrete terms, following Wu et al.’s [ 23 ] classification as a frame of reference, the eight most prolific contemporary authors approach the SDG research problem from two main domains, one of an environmental nature (Abhilash, Leal-Filho, Alola and Kalin) and the other related to health (Murray, Yaya, Bhutta, and Hay). The most common journals where these authors publish on environmental issues are the Journal of Cleaner Production, Higher Education, Water and Science of the Total Environment. Health researchers, on the other hand, tend to publish mainly in the journals of the BMC group, The Lancet and Nature.

This wide diversity of academic fora can be clarified with the application of Bradford’s laws, which identified a core of 18 journals that bring together the debates and academic discussions about the SDGs. It is worth noting that the 18 journals that form the core are distributed in 16 different thematic areas or WoS categories: Development Studies; Ecology; Economics; Education & Educational Research; Engineering, Environmental; Environmental Sciences; Environmental Studies; Green & Sustainable Science & Technology; Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism; International Relations; Medicine, General & Internal; Multidisciplinary Sciences; Public, Environmental & Occupational Health; Regional & Urban Planning; and Water Resources. On the one hand, this wide dispersion in terms of areas of knowledge suggests that research on the SDGs can be studied from different approaches and disciplines, which opens up a wide range of possibilities for researchers from different branches of scientific knowledge, as well as an opportunity for multidisciplinary collaborations. On the other hand, this heterogeneity might also hinder the communication and dissemination of learning from one field to another. The cross-citation analysis provided in Fig 5 suggests this possibility, as seminal works are related to thematic disciplines more than to the seminal contributions identified in Table 8 .

In this sense, it is interesting to analyse the top-cited articles in the database, as they provide a clear picture of the field of knowledge. One-third of these contributions are provided by international institutions, such as the United Nations Development Program or the World Bank, which provide analyses of a normative nature. This prevalence reflects some weaknesses in the academic basis of the analysis of the SDGs as a whole from a scientific approach, an idea reinforced when the most cited papers are analysed. In fact, only six papers have reached more than 100 citations by contributions included in the database [ 4 , 12 , 24 , 29 , 101 , 107 ]. Not only were these papers largely published before the approval of the SDGs themselves, but half of them are editorial material, inviting contributions but are not evidence-based research papers. Highlighting the nature of the most cited contributions does not diminish their value but does speak to the normative approach that underlies the analysis of the SDGs when addressed not individually but as an overall field of research.

Regarding topics and themes of interest, the scientometric analysis carried out in this research identified a strong concentration around a small number of terms, as represented in a heat map ( Fig 2A and 2B ). All these topics constitute a potential source of inspiration for future research on the subject.

Through an analysis of the main keywords, it can be seen that the studies focused on the traditional areas of health and climate change. However, these keywords also provide new elements for discussion, as they uncover some other areas of study that have been highlighted by the literature. First, the appearance of the term Management as one of the main keywords reveals the importance that researchers give to the role of business in achieving the SDGs, as already suggested by Scheyvens et al. [ 49 ] and Spangenber [ 22 ]. Second, the need to address new governance processes and to seek global solutions, as suggested by authors such as Sachs [ 4 ], underscore the keywords Governance, Policy and Framework, all aspects deemed crucial for the achievement of the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda [ 108 ]. Finally, other keywords such as Impact, Challenges or Systems are a clear example of the complexity and interdependencies that exist in research on the SDGs, considered an essential aspect by Griggs et al. [ 13 ] or Le Blanc [ 12 ]. The attained results highlight some of the connections between different domains of sustainable development by identifying categories and themes that are highly related in the groupings that emerge from the bibliographic coupling analysis.

In general terms, the holistic vision of development embodied by the SDGs has drawn the attention of very different disciplines, fields and areas of scientific knowledge. However, seven major areas of research have emerged: environmental and public affairs, health, economics, health-burden of disease, economics-Kuznets curve, energy and soil-land. These areas are not far removed from the current paradigm of sustainable development, where poverty or inequality are problems that are not exclusive to developing countries [ 5 , 6 ]. Thus, emerging issues that mainly affect first world countries, including urban planning, the impact of activities such as hospitality, sport or tourism, or education for development, are starting to stand out with increasing intensity, which continues to open new avenues for future research.

In short, the results of the scientometric analysis have provided a systematized overview of the research conducted in relation to the SDGs since the approval of the 2030 Agenda. Among other things, the critical analysis has identified the main trends with respect to the number of publications, the most relevant journals, the most prolific authors, institutions and countries, and the collaborative networks between authors and the research areas at the epicentre of the debate on the SDGs. As Olawumi and Chan [ 105 ] already acknowledged, the power research networks applied to the study of the SDGs offer valuable insights and in-depth understandings not only of key scholars and institutions but also about the state of research fields, emerging trends and salient topics.

Consequently, the results of this work contribute to the systematic analysis of scientific research on the SDGs, which can be of great interest for decision-making at the governmental level (e.g., which research to fund and which not to fund), at the corporate level and at the level of research centres, both public and private. Furthermore, the scientometric analysis carried out may provide clues for academics regarding future lines of research and topics of interest where the debate on the SDGs is currently situated.

5. Conclusions, limitations and future research lines

As could not be otherwise, all research in the field of social sciences has a series of limitations that must be clearly and transparently explained. The two most relevant in this study are the following.

First, although the study of the SDGs is a recent object of research, the rate of publication is growing exponentially, such that scientific knowledge is renewed practically in its entirety every two years. The only articles that escape this scientometric obsolescence are those with a high number of citations (h-index). This circumstance generates a temporal limitation in terms of the conclusions obtained in the present investigation, conclusions that should be revised periodically until the growth of publications stabilizes by adopting a logistic form, as recommended by Sun and Lin [ 109 ].

Second, the articles used as the basis for this research were restricted to those published in the JCR-WoS. This decision was made for two main reasons. On the one hand, the limitation was to eliminate potential distortions that could occur as a result of the constant growth of journals that are incorporated annually into other databases, such as ESCI-WoS (Emerging Sources Citation Index). On the other hand, it is impossible to compare impact indices if integrating other databases such as Scopus.

We are aware of these limitations, which for developing a more selective analysis imply assuming the cost of less coverage in exchange.

Regarding future lines of research, the analysis highlights how the study of the SDGs is failing to balance their economic, social and sustainability components, as it still maintains an overall focus on environmental studies.

This suggests the urgency of increasing studies on social SDGs, key topics on the 2030 Agenda including equity (SDGs 4, 5 and 10), social development (SDGs 11 and 16) and governance (SDG 17). These topics are part of the public discourse and currently a source of social pressure in many latitudes, but they are still research areas that are necessary to deepen.

Economic sustainability studies are more present, but highly concentrated, in health economics, as previously acknowledged by Meschede [ 81 ]. Academic research on the SDGs against poverty (SDG 1) and hunger (SDG 2) has not achieved such a prominent place as health. Even less so, the economics of technological development (SDGs 8 and 9), which are recognized as crucial for economic development.

Finally, the environmental SDGs do not achieve a balance among themselves either. Academic research has prioritized action for climate (SDG 13) and industrial and human consumption, mainly water (SDG 6) and energy (SDG 7). New research should be developed in the area of land (SDG 15), life under the sea (SDG 14) and sustainable production (SDG 12).

Supporting information

Funding statement.

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Data Availability

• PLoS One. 2022; 17(3): e0265409.

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PONE-D-21-28963Impact of the Sustainable Development Goals on the academic research agenda. A scientometric analysisPLOS ONE

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WE CONFIRM THAT WE HAVE RESENT THE PAPER TO AJE, WHICH ALREADY REVISED THE ADEQUACY OF ENGLISH BEFORE THE FIRST SUBMISSION. WE ATTACH THE CERTIFICATE OF SUCH REVISION.

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• 17 June 2024

The Sustainable Development Goals: can they be made smarter?

You have full access to this article via your institution.

The United Nations’ SDGs have transcended the policy world and entered the public consciousness. Credit: Noriko Hayashi/New York Times/Redux/eyevine

When a well-thought-out plan isn’t succeeding, what should the response be? Abandon the plan entirely? Hope that it just needs more time to work? Or get to grips with why it’s not working and make changes accordingly?

In the case of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), giving up cannot be an option . However, this global plan to end poverty and achieve environmental sustainability is clearly not working. None of the 17 goals, which include combating climate change and reducing inequality, is expected to be achieved by the UN’s 2030 deadline. Only about 12% of the 169 underlying targets are likely to be met. For example, 2.2 billion people around the world lack access to safe drinking water and more than 300 million people go to bed hungry every night. The stated aim of the SDGs is to drive both numbers to zero.

Extending the Sustainable Development Goals to 2050 — a road map

Is it possible to improve on the existing approach? In a Comment article this week , a group of researchers from institutions in Europe and the United States suggest a combination of responses. The researchers propose that the 17 goals should all remain the same, as should many of the targets and indicators for those targets. But they are also calling for greater ambition. The goal to end poverty should include providing social protection for vulnerable people, for example. The goal for zero hunger should also tackle undernutrition.

In other cases, they suggest that actions should align with international agreements — such as the Paris climate agreement’s commitment to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, so that global temperatures do not exceed 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels.

There are other lessons to be learnt since the SDGs were first agreed in 2015, such as the potential impacts of artificial intelligence (AI), the authors say. One study finds that AI could benefit 134 targets across all the goals, such as making better weather forecasts or improving medical diagnoses, but that AI could also inhibit 59 targets by, for example, fuelling the spread of disinformation ( R. Vinuesa et al . Nature Commun. 11 , 233; 2020 ).

Their advice is well timed. Talks on a post-2030 future for the SDGs have not yet officially begun, but because adjustments to them cannot be made quickly, the earlier that discussions can begin, the better. Any new indicator would need to meet the UN Statistical Commission’s criteria of being conceptually clear and having an internationally established methodology and agreed standards. All relevant data, moreover, would need to be regularly produced by a large proportion of countries.

Shortly after the SDGs were settled, only around 60% of the indicators had an agreed methodology and standards. Achieving this for the remaining indicators took four years. At the latest tally (in 2022), data are still not being produced by all countries for one-third of the indicators, often because of a lack of funding or because of other constraints (see ‘The $100m data drop’).

Source: UN/PARIS21

For these and other reasons, some of the goals are still not being assessed using quantitative measures. The standout example is SDG 13, the goal for climate action, which lacks a measurable target for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. To be part of the SDGs, national emissions would be reported annually and to a standard to be defined by expert bodies and then agreed by all member states — as would all other newly proposed targets and indicators.

Collaborate, collaborate

There’s a second reason why this proposal is well timed. UN secretary-general António Guterres has invited representatives of world leaders to gather in New York City this September for a meeting called the Summit of the Future. A draft of the document to be agreed on at this event — called the Pact for the Future — refers to a proposal to identify 10–20 SDG-like indicators of economic growth, well-being and sustainability. Few of the SDGs have the priority, status and attention in national policymaking that SDG 8 (economic growth) does. Guterres wants to change this and get policymakers to focus not just on economic indicators such as gross domestic product (GDP), but on a dashboard of indicators that he is calling Beyond GDP .

The world’s goals to save humanity are hugely ambitious — but they are still the best option

It’s important that this idea does not compete with the SDGs. That would be unproductive, given that both have similar aims. It is not surprising that this has happened — the UN is a large organization that is both complex and highly siloed. But with the opening of a debate about how best to iterate the SDGs, there is now an opportunity to allow these two processes to converge.

The SDGs ought to “remain at the centre of global policy agendas”, as the authors of the Comment article argue. The international community would then choose its favoured 10–20 indicators from any updated list. A huge amount of work has gone into creating and refining the SDGs. Guterres’s parallel effort will benefit by linking to the SDGs, taking advantage of almost a decade of accumulated learning, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.

A big win of the SDGs is that they have transcended the world of policymakers. Their multicoloured logos can be found everywhere from classrooms to company websites. They took a long time to negotiate, and a much has gone into their refinement. Any future efforts must build on what the world has learnt — while not losing the sense of urgency that comes with the existing deadline.

Nature 630 , 529 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02023-2

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Bulgaria to get energy boost with EIB-NEK deal on new hydropower plants

• The EIB will help Bulgarian national electricity company NEK prepare to build two large pumped-storage hydropower plants vital to ensuring adequate domestic and EU energy supplies.
• The two projects involving the EIB Advisory services bolster the stability of the power grid and integrate more renewable power sources.

The European Investment Bank (EIB) will provide advisory support to Natsionalna Elektricheska Kompania EAD (NEK), Bulgaria’s national electricity company, in preparing the construction of two large pumped-storage hydropower plants in the southwestern part of the country.

The pair of new renewable energy sources, named Batak and Dospat, will each add generation capacity of approximately 800 megawatts (MW) and expand storage capacity, strengthening electricity supply in Bulgaria and the European Union.

Under the agreement signed today, EIB Advisory – as a main partner of the InvestEU Advisory Hub of the European Commission – will examine the technical feasibility and economic viability of the two projects as well as assess their benefits and risks. This will allow NEK to make informed decisions crucial for the development of the two projects.

“The EIB supports the development of strategic sustainable investment projects in the energy sector across the European Union and beyond,” said EIB Vice-President Kyriacos Kakouris . “We are pleased to provide the Bank’s expertise in assessing the feasibility and the viability of the two projects, which can significantly impact Bulgaria’s energy mix and enhance the stability of its power grid while reinforcing the overall European energy grid infrastructure.”

A pumped-storage hydropower plant (PSHPP) has the ability not only to generate hydroelectric power but also to store and then release it into the electric grid when needed, acting like a giant battery.

“The partnership between the European Investment Bank and the Ministry of Energy is key to delivering projects that will contribute to achieving the energy transition. Among them is the development of pumped-storage hydropower plants, which could become the largest energy storage batteries in the region," said interim Energy Minister, Vladimir Malinov . "The implementation of such projects will enhance our energy security, improve Bulgaria’s energy infrastructure and achieve our decarbonization goals. We are grateful for the EIB’s expertise and support for this very important project.”

“The agreement signed today between NEK and the European Investment Bank marks an important step not only for the development of the Batak and Dospat PSHPP projects but also for ensuring the security of supply within Bulgaria’s electricity system and for achieving the country’s decarbonisation goals,” said NEK CEO Martin Georgiev . “It further represents an important tool, which unlocks the value that hydropower brings for the Energy Transition. The benefits and social significance of investing in such sustainable infrastructure are undeniable and we esteem it a privilege to have the expertise and support of the EIB and the European institutions involved in the process.”

The advisory support for NEK underscores the EIB’s commitment to sustainable green and energy transformation throughout the European Union.

Key contribution to energy stability and security of power supply in Bulgaria and European Union

The pair of new renewable energy sources, located at hydropower cascade dams and reservoirs near the towns of Batak and Dospat in southwest Bulgaria, are expected to function as large rechargeable batteries, storing green energy. This will provide NEK with flexible 24-hour and weekly management, rapid capacity replacement during emergencies and additional balancing services. With an estimated total cost of about €900 million each, the plants are projected to become operational by 2032.

The two projects are part of the Ten-Year Network Development Plan (TYNDP) 2024 of the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E).

Background information

About the EIB

The ElB is the long-term lending institution of the European Union, owned by the Member States. It finances sound investments that further  EU policy objectives . EIB projects bolster competitiveness, drive innovation, promote sustainable development, enhance social and territorial cohesion, and support a just and swift transition to climate neutrality.

The EIB Group, consisting of the EIB and the European Investment Fund (EIF), reported total financing signatures in Bulgaria of €1.11 billion last year , more than double the €494 million in 2022. Overall, the EIB Group signed €88 billion in new financing in 2023.

About InvestEU

The InvestEU programme provides the European Union with crucial long-term funding by leveraging substantial private and public funds in support of a sustainable recovery. It also helps mobilise private investments for the European Union’s policy priorities, such as the European Green Deal and the digital transition. The InvestEU programme brings together under one roof the multitude of EU financial instruments currently available to support investment in the European Union, making funding for investment projects in Europe simpler, more efficient and more flexible. The programme consists of three components: the InvestEU Fund, the InvestEU Advisory Hub and the InvestEU Portal. The InvestEU Fund is implemented through financial partners that will invest in projects using the EU budget guarantee of €26.2 billion. The entire budget guarantee will back the investment projects of the implementing partners, increase their risk-bearing capacity and thus mobilise at least €372 billion in additional investment.

Under InvestEU, the EIB acts as the main advisory partner to the European Commission by delivering advisory services to promoters.

Natsionalna Elektricheska Kompania EAD (NEK EAD) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Bulgarian Energy Holding EAD, under the principal oversight of the Ministry of Energy of Bulgaria. Established in late 1991, the company has solidified its position in Bulgaria’s power industry and economy. NEK’s mission is to ensure safe, efficient and uninterrupted power supply. The company operates 31 hydropower and pumped-storage hydropower plants, with a total installed generating capacity of 2 739 MW and a pumping capacity of 932 MW. Additionally, NEK EAD manages some of the largest dams and hydropower schemes in the country. The total capacity of the dam reservoirs operated by NEK EAD accounts for 55% of the controlled water resources in Bulgaria.

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The EIB and EADS have announced the signature of a EUR 300 million finance contract in support of EADS Group’s innovation and R&D programmes. This loan reflects the long-standing quality partnership that has formed between the EIB and EADS over the past ten years. It represents the second tranche of a first agreement signed in August 2011, whereby the EIB already made available EUR 500 million to EADS. This new finance contract brings the total volume of the EIB support under this agreement to EUR 800 million.

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Eib group backs bulgarian projects with €359 million in 2019.

Last year, the EIB Group, which consists of the EIB and the EIF, provided loans and guarantees worth €359 million to Bulgaria.

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