April 2019 Navigating the Structure of Research on Sustainable Development Goals Masafumi Nakamura, David Pendlebury, Joshua Schnell, and Martin Szomszor Contents Author Biographies Masafumi Nakamura is Senior Manager, Joshua Schnell is a Senior Advisor at Solution Consulting at the Web of Science the Institute for Scientific Information. Group in Japan. He has experience in He has experience in science planning research analytics to support universities and assessment, the evaluation of to develop their research strategy. research and development programs, 1 9 and science and technology policy. David Pendlebury is Head of Research Prior to joining ISI, he worked in research Introduction National Analysis at the Institute for Scientific administration and was a Science & Information (ISI). Since 1983 he has used Technology Policy Graduate Fellow at research focus Web of Science data to study the structure the US National Academies of Sciences. and dynamics of research. He worked 2 for many years with ISI founder Eugene Dr. Martin Szomszor is Head of Research Garfield and co-developed ISI’s Essential Analytics at the Institute for Scientific United Nations’ 10 Science Indicators with Henry Small. Information. He joined from Digital Science, where, as Chief Data Scientist Sustainable Regional he applied his extensive knowledge of machine learning, data integration and Development Goals collaboration visualization techniques to found the Global Research Identifier Database. He was named a 2015 top-50 UK Information Age data leader for his work in creating 4 11-12 the REF2015 impact case studies database for the Higher Education Methodology Policy focus Funding Council for England (HEFCE). 5 13 SDG topic map National activity and focus: About the Global Research About the Web of Science Group Report series from the Institute 6-7 United Kingdom for Scientific Information (ISI) The Web of Science Group organizes the world’s research information to enable SDG thematic map Global Research Reports from ISI is a academia, corporations, publishers and new publication series to discuss and governments to accelerate the pace of 14 demonstrate the application of data about research. It is powered by Web of Science the research process to management issues – the world’s largest publisher-neutral 8 Discussion in research assessment, research policy and citation index and research intelligence the development of the global research platform for research, discovery, access and Select observations base. ISI is the ‘university’ of the Web of assessment. Its many well-known brands Science Group: it maintains the knowledge also include Converis, EndNote, Kopernio, from the SDG 15 corpus upon which Web of Science Publons, InCites, ScholarOne and the and related information and analytical Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). topic map Bibliography content, products and services are built. It disseminates that knowledge internally The Web of Science Group is a through reports and recommendations Clarivate Analytics company. and externally through events, conferences and papers and it carries out research to www.webofsciencegroup.com extend and improve the knowledge base. @webofscience 2 Introduction The United Nations’ Sustainable Our analysis is only an overview, but it Development Goals (SDGs) represent a confirms a redirection of research towards powerful, shared aspiration for a better the UN’s shared goals and it describes the "Realize that future and a critical agenda for focus of research around particular areas coordinated investment and concerted as it is based on papers directly pertaining effort. They were adopted by the UN to SDGs, i.e. research articles with a title, General Assembly in September 2015 (A/ abstract or keywords that explicitly contain everything RES/70/1). Progress may be tracked the phrase, “sustainable development through 232 identifiable indicators goal(s).” It is important to distinguish this spread across 17 main goals. Their kind of analysis from those that are based connects to achievement will require significant work on thematic elements of specific goals, from national and regional governments e.g. searching for all research relating to to draw on existing resources and urban environments (SDG #11). There is everything else." knowledge. Many also require research no one-to-one relationship between the and innovation across a wide range of UN’s 17 SDGs and the topics identified disciplines, drawing on established through our search. In some cases, science and new endeavours. clusters of thematically related papers Leonardo da Vinci can be linked to several SDGs while in Our report aims to provide a top-down other cases they provide a more detailed view of global research activity, drawing on or distinct aspect of a single SDG. the knowledge-based resources of the Web of Science citation index and the analytical In summary, this report provides a competency of the Institute for Scientific literature-based analysis of research related Information (ISI) to provide a unique to the SDGs. It describes the methodology background view for SDG policy makers. used, lists the major topics uncovered, surveys research themes of particular focus Policy makers have unique analytic needs for nations producing at least a moderate and often need to react or act quickly. It is output of SDG-related papers, and tallies not always possible to spend any significant regional patterns of collaboration in SDG time to collect, clean and analyse data, and research. Of central interest is the thematic then to understand and interpret the results. map of SDG research (Figure 1, found on This report has been prepared with the pages 6 and 7), which reveals clusters of policy maker in mind as the approach used associated papers and the relation of these minimizes time and resources required to clusters to one another. Following the map, go from policy question to answer: first we identify some features that emerge from by drawing evidence from an existing the visualization and are of likely interest data source (Web of Science) and using to policy makers. Two policy-related established methodologies (bibliographic clusters are highlighted: Water Supply and coupling), then by combining reliability of Sanitation and Health and Healthcare of the findings with accessibility of results. Indigenous Peoples. Finally, the activity of the United Kingdom in SDG research The Web of Science indexes the contents receives special attention, including of more than 20,000 scholarly journals and a ranking of clusters in which the UK conference proceedings across all fields of produces the greatest number of papers science, social sciences, and humanities. and the greatest share of its SDG papers. The Web of Science is used daily by It is our intention that these policy-relevant researchers as a portal into the world of treatments serve to stimulate further high quality research. It is also widely interest in the application of such thematic used by policy analysts to evaluate the maps for evidence-based decision making. academic impact of research. The network of publications and citations reveals a map of the research landscape in which its territories can be described in detail. Here, we apply a specific perspective to capture global research that touches on the UN SDGs, especially recent research activity. 1 United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals – transforming our world Goal 5. Goal 12. Achieve gender equality and Ensure sustainable consumption empower all women and girls and production patterns Transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, September 25 2015. In In 2015 world leaders adopted an Goal 6. Goal 13. ambitious agenda, with seventeen Ensure availability and sustainable Take urgent action to combat Sustainable Development Goals at management of water and sanitation for all climate change and its impacts its heart – to wipe out poverty, fight inequality and tackle climate change. This global shared plan aims to transform the world in fifteen years and, crucially, to build lives of dignity for all. It has been hailed as, "…a universal, integrated and Goal 1. Goal 7. Goal 14. transformative vision for a better world." End poverty in all its forms everywhere Ensure access to affordable, reliable, Conserve and sustainably use the sustainable and modern energy for all oceans, seas and marine resources One might expect that our search, narrowly for sustainable development focused on papers specifically mentioning “sustainable development goal(s)” and their citing papers, would be less reliable than a more comprehensive data extraction Goal 2. Goal 8. that sought to collect all relevant papers End hunger, achieve food security Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable for each of the 17 SDGs. A comprehensive and improved nutrition and economic growth, full and productive Goal 15. search is challenging, however, because promote sustainable agriculture employment and decent work for all Protect, restore and promote of the nature of the SDGs, especially sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, in terms of precision and boundaries sustainably manage forests, combat for each goal. Our search specificity desertification, and halt and reverse land addresses the problem of determining degradation and halt biodiversity loss relevance. If a paper’s authors explicitly link it to SDGs, we are on firmer ground Goal 3. Goal 9. than if we created our own search profile Ensure healthy lives and promote Build resilient infrastructure,