Mapping national and institutional research that targets Sustainable Development Goals using OpenAlex data

Abstract

Research should address the pressing problems of society. We propose to use global maps using OpenAlex to highlight concepts (i.e., fields of research) where publishers, institutions, and countries are particularly active to achieve United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). As examples in this study, we use the countries USA and Japan, the research institutions Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and National Center for Atmospheric Research, and two publishers with a portfolio focused on a few SDGs: Hogrefe and American Society for Horticultural Science. As to be expected, we found that the USA is very active in many concepts to contribute to the SDGs (since the USA is very research active in general). We revealed for Japan that the country has two increased areas of activity to achieve the SDGs: One area is in Medicine and the other in Chemistry and Material Sciences. The two research organizations mainly contributed–as expected–to achieving SDG 13 (‘Climate action’) and SDG 14 (‘Live below water’). The two publishers’ maps reflect their focused portfolio but with specific highlighted characteristics. Our SDG mapping approach combines multiple aspects of the responsible use of bibliometrics in research evaluation: (1) By focusing on SDG relevant research, we provide an innovative approach for mapping research regarding specific topics that help to achieve particular goals. (2) Our approach goes beyond using simple counting of publications or citations (e.g., with the h index) by using maps to display fine grained results. (3) The usage of OpenAlex and free statistics software makes our procedure transparent and reproducible.