Productivity and Impact of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)-Related Academic Research: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

In this paper, we conduct a bibliometric analysis of the global research related to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the United Nations sustainability agenda. Our analysis builds upon the Elsevier Scopus-indexed scientific outputs since all those are classified for SDG relationships at indexing. We follow the recently published research protocol and use the Elsevier Scopus engine and the SciVal bibliometric reporting and benchmarking tool to analyze the productivity and impact of the global SDG-related research in the 2017–2022 period. We report on the most influential authors and publication outlets for SDG-related research, focusing on the collaboration patterns and their relationship to research productivity and impact. We also use keyword analysis and science mapping to describe the intellectual structure of the SDG research and its implications, which could be interpreted in terms of the “bandwagon effect”.