Tracking Sustainable Development Goals using Symplectic Elements

During Symplectic’s 2023 North American User Day, Alexandra Hiniker (Director of the Sustainability Initiative) and Jason Glenn (Program Director for Research Information Management Services) presented on CMU’s Sustainability Initiative and how they have been utilising Elements to help track their researchers’ engagement with and outputs related to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, a set of global objectives agreed to by all countries the United Nations as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

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For many of us, prosecco seems to have become the sine qua non of any gathering, combining as it does the popping cork, light fizz and often considerable price benefit compared to champagne. Celebrated on 13 August each year, it offers a chance for prosecco producers to market their wines, and for the rest of us to, well, enjoy them!

But aside from the marketing fluff, what’s going on academically with prosecco? Dimensions and Altmetric – as well as being fantastically powerful tools to aid deep investigation of research topics – can also offer insight into almost any field of study. So, what can we glean from recent studies on prosecco?

In Figure 1, we can see that the number of articles that mention ‘prosecco’ has steadily grown in the last decade, with a pronounced increase in 2021. However, this seemed to tail off in 2022, so perhaps interest in the topic has started to wane. This almost exactly mirrors global sales of prosecco and Italian wine in general, which have tailed off in 2022 after performing well during the pandemic.

However, if we break it down by the number of articles published by Sustainable Development Goals – one of the most useful ways of delineating research on Dimensions – we can see that while there has been a drop in research related to Good Health and Well Being (SDG #3) and Life on Land (#15), there has been a marked increase in research on prosecco related to SDG #13, namely Climate Action. This perhaps reflects overall increased focus in this topic, particularly when related to food production where climate change is impacting on vines and crops, and any ability to meet increased demands.

Certainly the reporting on prosecco-related research is maintaining its upwards trajectory, as we can see from Figure 3, which shows a steady increase in citations of research in this area. As there is a lag between citations and publications, we may see this drop away in future if the decline in research on prosecco remains on a downward trend.

When we look at the influence of the research outside academia, we may have expected a similar continual rise, however data from Altmetric shows if anything a steeper decline than we saw in research output. This could be explained in part by the much shorter lead time that digital influence exhibits compared to citations, but it could also be a strong indicator that prosecco research has had its place in the sun, and academic interest has gone rather flat.

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About the Author

Simon Linacre, Head of Content, Brand & Press | Digital Science

Simon has 20 years’ experience in scholarly communications. He has lectured and published on the topics of bibliometrics, publication ethics and research impact, and has recently authored a book on predatory publishing. Simon is also a COPE Trustee and ALPSP tutor, and holds Masters degrees in Philosophy and International Business.

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When the UN adopted the SDGs in 2015 to focus attention on the major challenges facing the world, it did so seeking to recognise all 193 signatory countries equally. It has always been apparent that some of the worst problems facing humanity are felt much more keenly in developing countries, however the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was an opportunity to right the wrongs of the past and even out inequalities.

However, there has been a nagging doubt, to paraphrase George Orwell, that ‘all countries are equal, but some countries are more equal than others’. This fear has been realized in a landmark white paper by Times Higher Education (THE),  Prince Sultan University and Digital Science, titled ‘Research in the Context of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in the Developed and Developing World: Evidence From the Past 15 Years’ and available on the website of the 2023 Global Sustainable Development Congress where it was released last week. 

The white paper is the most comprehensive of its kind to date and calls for greater equity for developing nations within the global research ecosystem, especially as those countries are impacted most by the issues the SDGs focus on. 

The white paper was commissioned by THE and utilizes data from Dimensions to uncover significant gaps in research funding, collaboration and assessment between developed and developing countries. Lower income countries struggle to gain recognition for their contributions towards the SDGs. The authors wanted to level the playing field with a series of recommendations, including:

• Targeted interventions to support lower-income countries, promote research infrastructure, and provide funding opportunities to bolster their research capacities and collaborations
• Continued use of THE Impact Rankings to help address global inequalities and promote strong SDG partnerships between regions
• Use of comprehensive and (if needed) bespoke metrics that capture the multidimensional aspects of research impact aligned with the SDGs, to provide valuable insights and guide policy-making and funding decisions
• Incentives at local and international levels to accelerate SDG research and research collaboration between high-income and lower-income countries, to help uplift scholars from countries that suffer from structural, historical and contemporary imbalances of power in the global research ecosystem.

When reviewing the report, it is clear from the analysis that there is a substantial gap between higher and lower income nations when it comes to research funding and recognition. Perhaps most importantly, this gap has been closing only slowly over the past 15 years, not quickly as one might hope and expect. 

The authors – Professor Mohammad Nurunnabi (Prince Sultan University), Dr Sanjida Haque (Prince Sultan University), Ms Ann Campbell (Digital Science), Dr Juergen Wastl (Digital Science), Dr Ishan Cader (Times Higher Education) – conclude by seeking to reinforce the urgent calls to action by policymakers, both regionally and globally. They say there is a clear need to reflect the quality and impact of research within less developed regions and implement strategies that not only improve the research ecosystem, but that utilize the global influence of university impact rankings. For everyone’s sake, let’s hope the game can be changed in favor of those who have been at a disadvantage since the first whistle.

About the Author

Simon Linacre, Head of Content, Brand & Press | Digital Science

Simon has 20 years’ experience in scholarly communications. He has lectured and published on the topics of bibliometrics, publication ethics and research impact, and has recently authored a book on predatory publishing. Simon is also a COPE Trustee and ALPSP tutor, and holds Masters degrees in Philosophy and International Business.

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“Climate change is one of the biggest threats to health.”
—Dr Beth Thompson, interim Director of Strategy, Wellcome Trust (7 February 2023).

This blog addresses the impact of climate change on infectious diseases, in particular infectious diseases with the potential to transmit from animals to humans, also known as zoonotic diseases. To set the scene for this, we first consider the wider context of how global warming has far-reaching consequences for humans and the planet. The global changes that we are currently experiencing have never happened before, with climate change representing one of the principal environmental and health challenges. We use Dimensions to explore published research, research funding, policy documents and citation data. To help us perform a deeper analysis of the data, we access the Dimensions data through its Google BigQuery (GBQ) provision. This allows us to integrate data from Dimensions with one of the  publicly available World Bank datasets on GBQ.  

We also look at the research in conjunction with two United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – SDG3 Good Health and Well-being and SDG13 Climate Action – and assess how they add to the narrative. Many of the health impacts associated with climate change are a particular threat to the poorest people in low- and middle-income countries where the burden of climate sensitive diseases is the greatest. This also suggests that the impact in these regions, based on the UN SDGs, may reach beyond climate (SDG13) and health (SDG3) to affect those who live in extreme poverty (SDG1) and/or those who experience food insecurity (SDG2).

“The climate crisis is a health crisis”

Introduction

1. Climate change and zoonotic diseases

Climate change has far-reaching implications for human health in the 21st century, with significant increases in temperature extremes, heavy precipitation, and severe droughts.¹ It directly impacts health through long-term changes in rainfall and temperature, climatic extremes (heatwaves, hurricanes, and flash floods), air quality, sea-level rise in low-land coastal regions, and many different influences on food production systems and water resources.²

In terms of human health, climate change has an important impact on the transmission of vector-borne diseases (human illnesses caused by parasites), in particular zoonotic infectious diseases (infections transmitted from animal to humans by the bite of infected arthropod species, such as mosquitoes and bats), and has a particular relevance due to the most recent COVID-19 and Zika virus outbreaks. Arthropods are of major significance due to their abundance, adaptability, and coevolution to different kinds of pathogens.³ 

Zoonotic infectious diseases are a global threat because they can become pandemics, as we have seen in the case of COVID-19, and are currently considered one of the most important threats for public health globally. The COVID pathogen spread worldwide, recording 255,324,963 cases with 5,127,696 deaths as of November 2021.⁴

One reason for this turnaround could be related to the widespread adoption of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and in particular SDG6, which sets out to “ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all”.⁹ The achievement of this Goal, even if partially, would greatly benefit people and the planet, given the importance of clean water for socio-economic development and quality of life, including health and environmental protection. SDG6 considers improvement of water quality by reducing by half the amount of wastewater that is not treated by 2030.

The changes in climatic conditions have forced many pathogens and vectors to develop adaptation mechanisms. For example, in the case of African Ebola, climate change is a factor in the rise in cases over the past two decades, with bats and other animal hosts of the virus being driven into new areas when temperatures change, potentially bringing them into closer contact with humans.  

Examples highlighting how the acceleration of zoonotic pathogens is attributable to changes in climate and ecology due to human impact are common. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), almost six out of every 10 infectious diseases can be spread from animals to humans; three out of every four emerging infectious diseases in humans originate from animals.⁵ Zoonotic diseases, such as those spread by mosquitoes and other related vectors, have increased in recent years. This is because the rise in global temperatures has created favourable conditions for breeding specific pathogens, especially in poorly developed countries predominantly in the Global South.⁶ Further, climate change is causing people’s general health to deteriorate, making it easier for zoonotic infections to spread, as seen with the Zika and dengue viruses.⁷

The changes in climatic conditions have forced pathogens and vectors to develop adaptation mechanisms. Such development has resulted in these diseases becoming resistant to conventional treatments due to their augmented resilience and survival techniques, thus further favouring the spread of infection.

2. Exploring links between climate change and zoonotic diseases as evidenced by mentions in policy documents

Developments in policy are generally rooted in academic research. Applying research to policy relevant questions is increasingly important to address potential problems and can often identify what has been successful or not successful elsewhere. Citations to the research that underpins policy documents is known to be an important (proxy) indicator of the quality of the research carried out. Awareness and the course of action taken by governments, NGOs and other health-focused institutions is evident by their activity in this area. For example, in the UK the government has recently allocated £200 million to fight zoonotic diseases.⁹ Actions that are taken relevant to this are communicated by, for example, relevant policy documents which mention the research influencing public policy decision making in this area. Policy documents provide us with a different perspective for analysis, allowing a closer proximity to ‘real world’, society-facing issues. 

3. The SDG3 and SDG13 crossover: research outputs associated with zoonotic diseases and climate change

The UN launched the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to address an ongoing crisis: human pressure leading to unprecedented environmental degradation, climatic change, social inequality, and other negative planet-wide consequences.¹⁰ There is growing evidence that environmental change and infectious disease emergence are causally linked and there is an increased recognition that SDGs are linked to one another. Thus, understanding their dynamics is central to achieving the vision of the UN 2030 Agenda. But environmental change also has direct human health outcomes via infectious disease emergence, and this link is not customarily integrated into planning for sustainable development.¹¹

Two of the 17 UN SDGs of most relevance to zoonotic diseases and climate change are SDG3 and SDG13.

Looking specifically at SDG3, reducing global infectious disease risk is one of the targets for the Goal (Target 3.3), alongside strengthening prevention strategies to identify early warning signals (Target 3.d).¹² Given the direct connection between environmental change and infectious disease risk, actions taken to achieve other SDGs also have an impact on the achievement of SDG3. Moreover, strengthening resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters is one of the targets for SDG13 (Target 13.1).¹³ The two SDGs perhaps highlight two sides of the same coin – SDG3 focusing on preventing and reducing disease risks and SDG13 focusing on strengthening resilience of climate-related hazards (infectious disease being an obvious hazard).

Exploring the crossover between SDG3 and SDG13 using Dimensions, reveals interlinkages with other SDGs – SDG1 No Poverty and SDG2 Zero Hunger. We know that living in poverty has negative impacts on health, and in respect of climate change, economic loss attributed to climate-related disasters is now a reality. Experiencing hunger can be a consequence of vulnerable agricultural practices that negatively impact food productivity and production. In 2020, between 720 and 811 million persons worldwide were suffering from hunger, as many as 161 million more than in 2019.¹⁴ Moreover, climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding and other disasters progressively deteriorate land and soil quality, severely affecting the cost of food items.

4. Funding of research associated with SDG3 and SDG13 – increases in SDG research funding

Scientific advances reveal empirical observations of the association between climate change and shifts in infectious diseases. Using Dimensions we can examine the scientific evidence for this by looking at the impact of climate change on zoonotic diseases. We can also track the science, through the lens of research outputs associated with both SDG3 and SDG13.  

Being able to assess publishing and funding behaviours by comparing the Global North and Global South countries provides us with an insight into where research is both funded and ultimately published. Moreover, one question we might ask is, given that the Global South is currently hardest hit by the consequences of climate change from an infectious disease perspective, will we see changes in publishing and funding practices in the future?

Furthermore, climate change has exacerbated many influencing factors. It has generated habitat loss, pushed wild animals from hotter to cooler climates where they can mix with new animals and more people, and it has lengthened the breeding season and expanded the habitats of disease-spreading mosquitoes, ticks, etc.,¹⁵ and so we could potentially see more zoonotic infectious disease spreading to countries in the Global North. Given these factors, and the capability of Dimensions, we can make comparisons over time and geolocation to track where changes are occurring.

Dimensions search strategy and data investigation

i. Search strategies

Research data were retrieved using Digital Science’s Dimensions database and Google BigQuery (GBQ). For initial searches we created a specific search term to identify publications associated with zoonotic/infectious diseases and climate change. Two sets of terms were used to define the searching keywords. The first was made up of keywords associated with zoonotic and infectious diseases, and the second was simply one word, ‘Climate’, as follows:

Zoonoses OR "zoonotic diseases" OR "parasitic diseases" OR "zoonotic pathogens" OR "vector borne diseases" OR "climate-sensitive infectious diseases" OR "infectious disease risk" OR "infectious diseases" AND Climate.

Dimensions’ inbuilt SDG classification system allowed for the linking of research outputs associated with SDGs both individually and in combination. On this basis we were able to include SDG3 Good Health and Well-being and SDG13 Climate Action to the search, allowing us to include outputs associated with both Goals. The main focus of the search carried out was on peer-reviewed articles and government policy documents between 2010 and 2022. A set of 1,436 research publications were retrieved and entered into further analyses separately. The research outputs retrieved shared a focus on the impact of climate change on pathogen, host and transmission of human zoonotic/infectious diseases.

A dataset based on the research outputs retrieved from Dimensions was created within GBQ. This allowed integration with publicly available datasets from the World Bank to ascertain low and high income countries and regions. The Dimensions GBQ provision also facilitates in-depth targeted analyses. This allowed us to look solely at the publications resulting from our search in order to identify trends in concepts, citations, policy documents and collaborations by geographic region.

ii. Findings

a) Publication timeline trends for research outputs tagged in Dimensions jointly with SDG3 and SDG13 and associated with zoonotic/infectious diseases and climate change were plotted.

Figure 3 highlights the trajectory over a 13-year time period for publications associated with both SDG3 and SDG13 in Dimensions. Of note, following implementation of the UN SDGs in January 2016, the upward trend in numbers of publications begins to rise sharply until the end of 2021, with a dip in 2022.

b) Co-authorship analysis: Collaboration by geographic region

Figure 4a reveals that for every 40 publications authored in a high-income country, one publication was in collaboration with a low-income country-based researcher. Figure 4b reveals that two in three publications authored by low-income country based researchers have been in collaboration with high-income country based researchers. We conclude from this that it is proportionately more likely for low-income country researchers to collaborate with researchers in the Global North than for researchers in the Global North to collaborate with researchers in the Global South. However, it is important to note here that numbers of research outputs are disproportionate between the global regions (see Table 1 below). 

2010-2022	Number and percentage of authors publishing climate change and infectious (zoonotic) diseases research	Number of authors publishing research outputs associated with SDG13	Number of authors publishing research outputs associated with SDG3	Total number of authors publishing in each geographic income region
Global South
Low-income countries	52 (0.11%)	2,818 (6.22%)	26,649 (58.85%)	45,285 (100%)
Lower-middle-income countries	468 (0.03%)	85,931 (6.07%)	409,355 (28.93%)	1,415,019 (100%)
Global North
High-income countries	618 (0.01%)	365,917 (4.73%)	2,337,971 (30.22%)	7,736,160 (100%)
Upper-middle-income countries	2,419 (0.06%)	194,187 (4.56%)	850,954 (19.97%)	4,260,966 (100%)

Table 1 outlines the combined total number of authors of published research in the Global South and Global North, including the proportion of researchers against the total number of researchers in each of these regions. The figures in the table reveal that proportionally the number of researchers publishing research on zoonotic diseases and climate change is higher than that of higher-income countries. We argue here that this research focus is not necessarily a niche area for Global South countries (even though their number of research outputs and activity is low in real terms). Consideration of the number of authors publishing zoonotic diseases and climate change research papers against numbers of authors publishing in areas associated more generally with SDG3 and SDG13 provides a glimpse of the breadth of sustainable development research of which our topic area is just one component. 

Despite the crossover with SDG3 and SDG13 not being high, it shows that the engagement of researchers in low-income countries with zoonotic diseases research is notable and contributes to research progress in this area. However, the research is better represented if we look proportionally. For example, 52 researchers in low-income countries represent 8% of the number of zoonotic disease researchers in high-income countries (618), but the total number of researchers publishing overall in low-income countries (45,285) represents just 0.5% of all researchers in high-income countries (7.7 million) making the proportional contribution by low-income country researchers 40 times greater than high-income country researchers in this research area.

c) Research publications by geographic region

Figure 5 above reveals a total of 1,419 research publications pre- and post-SDG period from 2010-2022 by country income group have been captured by Dimensions. The numbers represented in the chart reveal that publications have at least one author in the country income groupings outlined. In order to incorporate collaborations, a publication is included twice if it includes an author within each income group. This only applies for the analysis of country income groups. It allows us to see any increases/decreases in collaborative behaviour. In this respect, we note the contribution (either through collaborating or writing their own publications) from low/low-medium-income (Global South) countries has risen both in number and as a proportion of the outputs from 2010.

d) Citation analysis by geographic regions

The data in Figure 6a and 6b above reveal that:

1. South-East Asia as a producer of this research is dominant in the Global South (see Fig. 6b).

2. In the Global South, South-East Asia both publishes research and favourably cites research from the same region (see Fig. 6a).

3. Research output in South-East Asia is not as highly cited by the Global North (see Fig. 6b). What is notable however, is the overall dominance of the Global North for both research output and citation counts. We conjecture one reason for why this might be the case is that the Global South may not have access to the same level of funding or collaboration opportunities. Moreover, differences in research focus could account for the distinction. Moreover, interest in these areas by high-income country research(ers) may be less pronounced than those research areas elsewhere in the Global South (eg, Africa) where there is more collaboration, or more ‘gain’ for Global North countries (Ebola, Zika etc). For example, if India’s research focus was local to aspects of zoonotic diseases that only affect this country, then it might be less likely that higher income countries would cite the research. This warrants a deeper dive into the data to uncover such findings but is outside the scope of the blog.

In conclusion, it is perhaps the case that areas which are most affected by climate change and zoonotic diseases have become publication ‘hotspots’ which are not yet attractive to researchers in Global North countries.

e) Funding – by income/geography; Funder type

The general trend seen in Fig. 7 above reveals government funding to be the major driving force in zoonotic diseases and climate change research in all of the country groupings.  What Dimensions reveals in this respect is that governments in the Global North provide 100% of the government funding that is held in the Dimensions database for research on these topics in the Global South. This would explain perhaps why low-income countries in the Global South, where research infrastructure isn’t as well funded, receives less government funding as it is awarded by the Global North. Looking at funding from non-profit sources, which includes organisations such as Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the Science and Technology Development Fund, we note that such organisations provide nearly a quarter of all research funding held in Dimensions, in the Global South. As with government funding, 98% of all non-profit research funding in both regions comes from non-profit organisations in the Global North. It is interesting to note, given the focus of the research, that only a very small proportion of funding is received across all funder types from the healthcare sector. All other funders included in Fig. 7 92.5% of funding comes from the Global North (healthcare funding is included in this figure).¹⁶

f) Policy documents and their citing publications

In Dimensions, policy sources and document types range from government guidelines, reports or white papers; independent policy institute publications; advisory committees on specific topics; research institutes; and international development organisations. The top 12 policy publishers that are outlined in Fig. 8 above represent those publishers of policies citing research outputs associated with climate change and zoonotic diseases. It is perhaps not unexpected that the number of publications cited by the World Health Organization would be high given its global vision to eliminate the disease burden globally and to reverse climate change. Zoonotic diseases are very much on the radar of the global agencies concerned with global health which, given climate change, means that spread of these diseases in the Global North is more likely.

Takeaway findings

Using Dimensions’ capability to take a deep dive into research exploring zoonotic diseases and climate change in the context of SDGs has enabled us to uncover a number of interesting findings that are illuminating in the context of a world view.

Our investigations have revealed several interesting findings, including:

• Research publications in this area have increased more than two-fold since the implementation of the SDGs.  
• Collaboration patterns in the Global North and Global South reveal that researchers in Global South countries are more likely to collaborate with researchers in the Global North than vice versa.
• The total number of authors publishing research on zoonotic diseases and climate change in the lowest-income countries represents 8% of the total number of zoonotic disease researchers in high-income countries (see Table 1). Expanding this out across all research publications, the total number of researchers publishing in low-income countries represents just 0.5% of all researchers in high-income countries, making the proportional representation of low-income country researchers 40 times greater than high-income country researchers. Although actual numbers would reveal a different story, we believe that depicting the data in this way provides a balanced representation of the research output.
• Research carried out on zoonotic diseases and climate change in the lower income countries is less well cited by higher income countries.
• The data in Dimensions highlights that government organisations in the Global North award much of the funding for research in the Global South, and likewise for funding from non-profit agencies. What we might consider here as an explanation is that numerous organisations in the Global North such as Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the SCI Foundation, along with governments, are committed to the elimination of zoonotic diseases and in helping reduce carbon emissions to reverse climate change at a global level.

Conclusion

What is apparent is that governments around the world are investing large sums of money as part of the global mission to halt the spread of animal diseases and to protect the public against zoonotic disease outbreaks before they become pandemics that pose a risk globally.

Digital Science’s Dimensions database provided us with enormous opportunities for the interrogation of data to gather insights on zoonotic diseases and climate change (much more than could be included in this blog). The comprehensiveness of the database in terms of its coverage of publications, policy documents, grant funding and SDG-associated output (among others) in the Global North and Global South allows for creating the most value. As a linked research database, the possibilities for generating downstream link- and flow- analyses across geographies means it is an invaluable tool for the widest possible discovery across the research ecosystem.

About Dimensions

Part of Digital Science, Dimensions is the largest linked research database and data infrastructure provider, re-imagining research discovery with access to grants, publications, clinical trials, patents and policy documents all in one place. www.dimensions.ai

About the Authors

Dr Briony Fane, Director, Researcher Engagement, Data | Digital Science

Dr Briony Fane gained a PhD from City, University of London, and has worked both as a funded researcher and a research manager in the university sector. Briony plays a major role in investigating and contextualising data for clients and stakeholders. She identifies and documents her findings, trends and insights through the curation of customised in-depth reports. Briony has extensive knowledge of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and regularly publishes blogs on the subject, exploring and contextualising data from Dimensions.

Ann Campbell, Product Technical Specialist | Dimensions

Ann Campbell (MPhil) joined Digital Science after almost 16 years working in the university sector where she successfully implemented several information systems used across the student and research lifecycle. Ann has a broad knowledge of data integration and analysis, primarily in the areas of academic research and impact, research assessment, diversity and inclusion and the UN SDGs. With extensive expertise in academic related data, she has played a lead role in data preparation for a number of REF assessments, diversity and inclusion charters and mandatory submissions.

Dr Juergen Wastl, Director of Academic Relations and Consultancy | Digital Science

Dr Juergen Wastl leads on supporting research institutions, funders, governments and other institutions with research capabilities to make better use of data to inform their strategies and decisions. Juergen headed the team that developed the Sustainable Development Goals classification for Dimensions and spearheads investigations and innovative analysis based on the UN SDGs. He is also Associate Director at the Research on Research Institute (RoRI) and he has considerable experience in all matters associated with research evaluation, assessment and interoperability.

¹ https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s40121-022-00647-3.pdf

² Field, C.B., V.R. Barros, D.J. Dokken,et al. 2014. Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects.Working Group II Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge, UK and New York,NY: Cambridge University Press.

³ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4459090/pdf/fpubh-03-00157.pdf

⁴ Ajuwon BI, Roper K, Richardson A, Lidbury BA. One Health Approach: A Data-Driven Priority for Mitigating Outbreaks of Emerging and Re-Emerging Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. Trop Med Infect Dis. 2021 Dec 29;7(1):4. doi: 10.3390/tropicalmed7010004. PMID: 35051120; PMCID: PMC8780196

⁵ Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19(2), 893; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19020893

⁶ We use the terms Global North/Global South and High- high middle income and low- low middle income countries interchangeably.

⁷ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31196187/

⁸ https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s11356-020-08896-w

⁹ https://www.gov.uk/government/news/200-million-investment-to-fight-zoonotic-diseases#:~:text=The%20%C2%A3200%20million%20funding,Capability%20in%20Animal%20Health%20programme

¹⁰ https://news.un.org/en/search/Sustainable%20development%20goals

¹¹ https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.2001655117

¹² https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal3

¹³ https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal13

¹⁴ https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/hunger/

¹⁵ https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/inevitable-outbreaks-spillovers-pandemics

¹⁶ It is important to note here that Dimensions funding data is skewed towards the Global North.

The post Zooming in on zoonotic diseases appeared first on Digital Science.

For nearly three decades the UN has been bringing together countries from around the globe to hold climate summits on how to address the growing climate crisis. Last year’s Conference of the Parties (COP) in Glasgow (delayed by a year due to the pandemic) took major steps toward addressing the climate crisis, but failed to deliver the national commitments required to together limit warming globally to 1.5C laid out by the Paris Agreement.

After a year of extreme weather events, from record heatwaves to disastrous flooding, this year’s COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, will be crucial as the world seeks to take steps together toward mitigating and preventing the worst impacts of climate change. 

A UN Climate Change ‘Global Innovation Hub’ (UGIH) will be held during COP27, accessible digitally for the first time to enable greater collaboration, and is set to “ratchet up the scale and effectiveness of innovation in tackling climate change and help deliver on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals”. The UGIH aims to accelerate action across both the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda. 

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are designed to be a blueprint for achieving a better and more sustainable future for all by addressing the global challenges we face. The SDGs are at the centre of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and represent an urgent call for action by all countries – both developed and developing – in global partnership. They recognise that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.

Tracking and reporting on SDGs in Elements 

Since SDGs were first introduced, there has been a growing vested interest in tracking, analysing and showcasing the ways in which researchers are contributing to achieving these goals, and in demonstrating global research impact at an institutional level. This can be clearly seen in the increasing numbers of institutions participating in the Times Higher Education (THE) Impact Rankings, which in 2022 showed a 23% increase from 2021. THE Impact Rankings are the only global performance tables that assess universities against SDGs, and currently show participation across 110 countries and regions.   

This year we introduced simple but powerful functionality into Elements, allowing institutions to track which research outputs, publications, and activities connect back to the 17 SDGs via use of a new label scheme. SDG labels can be applied to any items captured in Elements (eg. publications, grants, professional & teaching activities and records of impact). 

Labels can be applied manually, in bulk via the Elements API, or automatically through our Dimensions integration. Dimensions uses machine-learning to automatically analyse publications and grants, and map them to relevant SDGs. Dimensions maps SDG labels to over 12.9 million publications and hundreds of thousands of grants, with more records being analysed and mapped all the time. These labels are now automatically harvested into Elements together with other metadata on Dimensions records. Those who are licensed to use Dimensions as a data source can further exploit the benefit of having SDG labels harvested and applied to records automatically.

Read our Digital Science report on Contextualising Sustainable Development Research.

Once collected, SDG data can be used for powerful reporting purposes, whether at an individual, school, or institutional level. We have introduced stock dashboards to support initial reporting on SDG labels. These tools can help research institutions demonstrate which individuals, schools or groups are focused most on specific SDGs, analyse gaps and areas of further necessary investment, and even demonstrate return on investment for funding.

Labels can also be applied to user profiles and surfaced in public profiles within the Discovery Module add-on to Elements, helping external researchers, members of the press and other stakeholders identify specialists working toward particular sustainability goals (see examples of public profiles showcasing SDG labelling at Oklahoma State University or Lincoln University). This can help drive discoverability of research, open up opportunities for greater collaboration and innovation, and support the public understanding and availability of science by connecting the media to knowledgeable scientific sources. 

Users can search and filter by specific SDGs they are interested in to find researchers specialising in that field, while the researchers themselves can showcase their work within their own profiles. 

Applying the SDG framework to Elements facilitates and supports both internal and external collaboration and innovation, advancing global efforts to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

SDG Case Study: Carnegie Mellon University 

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private, global research university which stands among the world’s most renowned educational institutions. CMU acquired Elements in 2017 and now uses the platform across a wide range of use cases, including “service tracking, faculty annual reviews, publications and monitoring, public directory, custom reporting, data visualization and analysis, data feeds to external websites, open access research and scholarship, data migration from historical systems, researcher identity management, and mapping faculty research to Sustainable Development Goals”. Read more.

During 2021, the University Libraries worked alongside the Provost Office’s Sustainability Initiative to conduct the Sustainable Development Goal mapping with a set of early adopters.

A recent news post on the Carnegie Mellon libraries blog on their ongoing expansion of Elements across campus explains how Director of Sustainability Initiatives Alexandra Hiniker utilised Elements to support faculty in thinking critically about how their work aligns with the 2030 Agenda.

“One thing I’ve heard consistently from students, faculty, staff, and external partners that I work with here in Pittsburgh, across the country, and around the world, is that they want to know what our CMU community is doing on the range of sustainable development goals that cover everything from poverty and hunger, to good health and wellbeing, peaceful, just and strong institutions, reducing inequalities, and of course, climate action,” explains Hiniker in a recent video interview published by the university. “There’s so much great work going on across CMU but it’s hard to pull out all of that information, and share it with all of these different people who are interested in collaboration.

“As part of my role linking students, staff, and faculty across the campus to sustainability efforts, I heard from them that the most important thing was to connect to different parts of the university to which they usually didn’t have access,” Hiniker explained. “Elements is a way for people to quickly access information about what researchers are doing, so that they can help contribute to finding solutions to some of the world’s greatest challenges.”

Elements is now providing a centralized space for CMU’s campus researchers to record which SDGs are associated with their research outputs and other academic activities. The Libraries’ Elements reporting and data visualization team worked with the Sustainability Initiatives Office to build reporting dashboards which surface data on how faculty initiatives and research across campus are supporting specific SDGs. 

You can hear more from Hiniker directly in this short interview:

Find out more or get support

Elements can help you track and report on how your researchers are contributing towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as we all work towards achieving a better and more sustainable future for all. Not only does this make participation in the THE Impact Rankings far simpler, it also helps you demonstrate your commitment to global progress to researchers and faculty, prospective students, funders, and other key stakeholders. If you’d like to get in touch to learn more about Elements, or if you’re a current client who’d like more information on how to integrate Dimensions as a data source, or surface SDG labels in public profiles, please get in touch to find out more. 

The Digital Science Consultancy team can also produce tailored analysis for non-profits, governments, funders, research institutions and STEM publishers to inform strategy to meet organisational goals. We can help you relate the influence and impact that your organisation has to research on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

About the Author

Natalie Guest, Marketing Director | Symplectic

Natalie Guest works in pursuit of the advancement of knowledge by delivering flexible research solutions that help universities, institutions and funding organisations achieve their research goals. She has 10 years’ experience in B2B technology marketing, focusing predominantly on the scholarly publishing, research and information management sector.

The post Demonstrating Real Impact: SDG Reporting for Institutions appeared first on Digital Science.

“Good water quality is essential to human health, social and economic development, and the ecosystem. However, as populations grow and natural environments become degraded, ensuring there are sufficient and safe water supplies for everyone is becoming increasingly challenging. A major part of the solution is to produce less pollution and improve the way we manage wastewater.” ¹

The increase in water contamination and pollution due to human activity has resulted in one of today’s most critical environmental challenges, with worsening water pollution affecting both developed and developing countries. In the latter, it is mostly due to rapid population growth and urbanisation, increased industrial and other economic activities, as well as political and public apathy to improve and maintain water and wastewater management processes in the long-term.²

Untreated wastewater has a severely detrimental impact on the environment, and the rapid industrialisation that has been evident during the last few decades has significantly increased the amount of pollutants in the environment. Improper treatment of some hazardous industrial wastes released into bodies of water has had toxic effects on all types of life forms, both directly and indirectly.³ Textile dyeing is the second-largest polluter of water worldwide, with the fashion industry producing 20% of the world’s wastewater alone. This is because textile manufacturers use large amounts of water and the resulting wastewater produces highly polluted discharge.

Research has shown that the social and economic development in China has led to a significant deterioration in the water environment, which has limited sustainable regional development.⁴  The textile industry in China is one of the country’s most important industries. Its biggest impact on the environment is related to primary water consumption and wastewater discharge. The manufacturing of textiles has created serious challenges for water sustainability, characterised by intensive chemical consumption and waterborne pollution.⁵

Understanding the factors that impact on the water environment is vital for future water conservation efforts. With the acceleration of industrialisation, China’s water quality has deteriorated to become one of the world’s worst,⁶ and it has the fourth largest freshwater reserves in the world alongside one fifth of the world’s population. Due to increasing demands over water use, such resources are being increasingly and extensively exploited for economic purposes.⁷ However, in recent years, the Chinese government has implemented more stringent environmental regulations in an attempt to change the situation.⁸

One reason for this turnaround could be related to the widespread adoption of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and in particular SDG6, which sets out to “ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all”.⁹ The achievement of this Goal, even if partially, would greatly benefit people and the planet, given the importance of clean water for socio-economic development and quality of life, including health and environmental protection. SDG6 considers improvement of water quality by reducing by half the amount of wastewater that is not treated by 2030.

Digital Science’s goal is to try to change the scientific ecosystem by challenging the way things are done and act To interrogate the research being done on this important topic, we used Dimensions to identify research publications associated with wastewater and the textile manufacturing industry with the intention of seeing each country’s – in particular China’s – contribution to research in this space.  An initial search looked at wastewater and water pollution to clarify the extent of research output in this area, and to identify the countries where there appeared to be a significant research focus.The extent of research being undertaken across these domains highlighted the countries with the greatest number of publications in wastewater pollution, and showed that China, the United States and India in particular, had the greatest research output.

Delving deeper into the data from DImensions, we developed a more specific search focusing on wastewater and water pollution while also introducing terms related to the textile industry, thus creating a narrower search focus.¹⁰  We also used keywords sourced following an extensive literature search – the full search string can be found at the end of this blog. Using the detailed search we investigated this area of research in the context of a number of domains including the UN SDGs, Fields of Research (FoRs), and also looked at the top research producing countries to explore research outputs in more detail (see Fig.2 below).

The detailed search resulted in 4,446 publications identified in Dimensions across a 10-year time period (see Fig. 3 below). An increased upward trend from 2017 to 2021 is evident, which is suggestive that the years following implementation of the UN SDGs in 2016, highlights the increased importance of research in this domain. Looking at the percentage differences (see Table 1) where the pre-SDG has been compared with post-SDG, time periods, the difference is clearly evident, with a threefold increase in published research after the implementation of the SDGs, again potentially indicative of this influence and the 2030 Agenda.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), wastewater and textile manufacturing, in Dimensions

Academic institutions play a crucial role in ensuring the success of the SDGs, and scientific research is one of the most relevant dimensions for the achievement of the 2030 SDG Agenda.¹¹ It addresses real-world problems, societal needs, and innovative technologies necessary to break new ground for sustainable development.

Taking the research outputs following the detailed search, we filtered for those publications that have been classified as relating to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (using the Dimensions SDG classification system – see Fig. 4 below).

In total, Dimensions generated 572 SDG associated outputs. Of this total, 272 were related to SDG6 ‘Clean Water and Sanitation’, revealing it as one of the main SDG drivers for sustainable development research. Within SDG6 there are eight outcome targets, the third of which -Target 6.3 – is especially relevant here. It demands that: “By 2030, improve water quality by reducing pollution, eliminating dumping and minimising release of hazardous chemicals and materials, halving the proportion of untreated wastewater and substantially increasing recycling and safe reuse globally”.

Looking at the FoR categories associated with the outputs we note that the 272 SDG6 outputs are predominantly associated with Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Chemical Engineering and Chemical Sciences. It is understood that realising SDG6 includes overcoming numerous challenges, one of which is water pollution from the release of hazardous materials by the textile industry, and the fields of research highlighted above fit well with publications that might address overcoming such challenges.

We also found that SDG7 (‘Affordable and Green Energy’ – 232 outputs) has a similar trajectory to that of SDG6 with a sharper increase of publications year on year from 2017, following the implementation of the UN SDGs (See Fig. 4).  It is also an SDG where one might expect a considerable overlap with SDG6. To investigate this, we looked at the FoR categories associated with SDG7 and found that they were the same as for SDG6, predominantly in the fields of Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Chemical Sciences and Chemical Engineering. 

Fields of Research (FoRs) categories, wastewater, water pollution and textile manufacturing

Table 2 below outlines the top six research producing countries as evidenced by the highest number of publications in the five dominant FoR categories – the research focus direction.   What is apparent here is that China is the top research producing country with approximately 50% of its published research identified as being in the FoRs of Engineering and Chemical Sciences categories, whereas for India and Turkey it is in the FoRs Engineering and Environmental Engineering categories. For all of the six countries identified, Engineering is the top FoR category.¹²

Keyword co-occurrence analysis

A keyword co-occurrence analysis of all the keywords attached to the published research in the specified search was carried out using VOSviewer¹³ (See Fig, 6 below). The VOSviewer tool allows the evaluation of all keywords attached to the publications and assesses the strength of the links between them. It attaches a relevance score providing an indication of the strength of the links to the topic of the publication. The colours of the nodes refer to their average relevance amongst the links that have been counted (tenuous links are not counted as relevant) and the higher co-occurrence amongst items is represented by the size of the nodes.

Following an interrogation of the keyword co-occurrences involved in the network visualisation outlined below, their links to FoRs becomes evident: 

• The blue and lime green clusters connect and centre around the dyeing process and chemicals involved in this, and are chiefly associated with the Chemical Sciences FoR category.  
• The red cluster mainly overlaps with the purple cluster and relates to components of wastewater and treatment technologies and is associated with the Engineering FoR. 
• The green cluster and the lime green cluster are also connected and relate to treatment efficiencies and conditions centred around dyeing, and associate with Engineering, Chemical Sciences and Physical Chemistry FoR categories.

These observations allow for a different perspective on the association amongst fields of research and we are able to see more comprehensive relationships revealing their multidisciplinary nature. 

Conclusions

The main focus of this blog was to look at wastewater and water pollution in textile manufacturing and to explore the association between the scientific literature within two of Dimensions’ classification systems – SDGs and FoRs. The article has set out a descriptive analysis of features of the research on wastewater pollution in the textile industry.

We carried out an initial search using Dimensions to assess how much of the research literature could be associated with wastewater and water pollution.  Having established that Dimensions yielded a substantial number of publications (256,967 outputs), we narrowed down the focus of the search by increasing the number of search terms to create a search string that focused more specifically on wastewater and water pollution within the textile industry. The rationale for this was that textile manufacturing has developed rapidly in recent years which has led to increasing concerns regarding textile wastewater pollution. This search yielded 4,475 publications. We were particularly interested in looking at how much textile manufacturing wastewater research underpinned the SDGs, in particular SDG6 Clean Water and Sanitation, as well as looking at timelines to ascertain any potential trends, such as those that might be evident pre- and post-SDG implementation. The results indicated that the number of research publications did sharply increase post-SDG implementation and that SDG6, as well as SDG7, Affordable and Green Energy, were the main SDG drivers of this research. Given the overlapping nature of these two SDGs, it makes sense that they both would feature highly. 

A further layer of interest was our investigation of the Fields of Research classifications underpinning the outputs from the Dimensions search, which revealed, not unexpectedly, that wastewater pollution in textile manufacturing has been studied in a number of different FoR categories, with publications in Engineering, Environmental Engineering and Chemical Sciences being the most published areas, followed by Chemical Sciences.  In an attempt to understand potential differences in research focus in different countries we looked at the top six research producing countries and FoR categories, which revealed that China came top with 608 publications, followed by India with 533 and Turkey with 279 publications.

Finally, using VOSviewer to create a network co-occurrence analysis, we confirmed our findings highlighting those areas of research focusing on the environment, on the chemistry involved, on water, and its treatment in the urban environment, as well as textile dyes and their removal.

For more information about how Dimensions can provide detailed insights into the research ecosystem, please visit the Dimensions website.

About the Authors

Dr Juergen Wastl, Director of Academic Relations and Consultancy |Digital Science

Dr Wastl previously headed up the Research Information team at the University of Cambridge’s Research Strategy Office.

Dr Briony Fane, Research Analyst |Digital Science

Dr Fane has a higher education background, having gained a PhD from City, University of London, and has worked as both a researcher and a research manager.

¹ https://www.unwater.org/water-facts/quality-and-wastewater/

² https://www.nature.com/articles/s41545-020-0069-3

³ https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/chapterhtml/2021/bk9781839162794-00001?isbn=978-1-83916-279-4&sercode=bk

⁴ https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2021.744224/full

⁵ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0043135421008502?via%3Dihub

⁶ https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su12197841

⁷ https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-319-32845-4_9

⁸ https://www.iea.org/reports/an-energy-sector-roadmap-to-carbon-neutrality-in-china

⁹ https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal6

¹⁰ Detailed search string
((“textile production” AND “water pollution”) OR (“garment dyes” AND pollution) OR (“textile manufacturing” AND wastewater) OR (“textile processes” AND pollution) OR (“wastewater discharge” AND “textile industry”) OR (“water eutrophication” AND textiles) OR (“Water Ten Plan”) OR (“untreated wastewater” AND “textile production”) OR (“wastewater treatment” AND textiles) OR (“garment dye” AND “water pollution”) OR (“garment dyes” AND “water pollution”) OR (“textile manufacturing” AND water pollution) OR (“textile pollutants AND wastewater”) OR (“wastewater chemical pollutants” AND “textile production”) OR (“wastewater chemical pollutants” AND “textile manufacturing”) OR (“water pollutant discharge” AND “textile production”) OR (“textiles wastewater”) OR (“industrial water pollution”))

¹¹ https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frsus.2021.620743/full

¹² It is important to caveat here that given the narrow focus, numbers are small and relative and differences are not substantial.

¹³ van Eck, N. J.; Waltman, L. (2010) VOSViewer: Visualizing Scientific Landscapes [Software]. Available from https://www.vosviewer.com

The post When economy meets environment: Sustainable development and the case of wastewater pollution in textile manufacturing appeared first on Digital Science.

Juergen Wastl is Director of Academic Relations and Consultancy at Digital Science. He previously headed up the Research Information team at the University of Cambridge’s Research Strategy Office and worked for BASF managing BMBF-funded projects internationally. Briony Fane is a Research Analyst at Digital Science. She has a higher education background, having gained a PhD from City, University of London, and has worked as both a researcher and a research manager. Bo Alroe has worked with research management and administration since 2004,  and currently as Director of Strategy with Digital Science. Bo is from Aalborg, Denmark, where he studied and currently lives with his family.

Introduction

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) are global targets set by the UN across 17 areas that will give rise to a better and more sustainable world for all. Research relating to these SDGs can therefore be seen as socially impactful, and analysing trends in SDG-related research can indicate how a researcher, institution, funder or country is contributing to meeting these targets.

Continuing our SDG blog series, this blog focuses on insights in SDG related allocation of research funding related to the SDGs. Having broadened its categorisation of grants data to include classification by SDG codes, we can use Dimensions to gain insights into how competitive funding supports the Goals. By applying Dimensions’ SDG classifications to its grants database, we discovered over 6 million grants worth more than £1.37 trillion, from over 600 funders worldwide that can be searched and analysed. We took a dive into the data to discover which UK research councils support SDG-related research, where funding is focused across the UN SDGs, how much is allocated to sustainability research, and more.

Figure 1: A Dimensions screenshot showing how a single grant can be assigned multiple SDG classifications; SDGs 2, 7, and 12 in this instance

How much UKRI funding supports SDG-related research?

Dimensions’ classification system was developed jointly with the Dutch universities (via the Association of Universities in the Netherlands, VSNU), SpringerNature, and Digital Science. The aim was not only to design a classification system that can categorise grants that mentioned sustainability or the UN’s work but also to assign SDG classifications to research – including grants and publications – to better support the goal of sustainability. Supervised machine learning was used to classify content in Dimensions. For a publication abstract or grant to merely mention sustainability or related concepts such as ‘pollution’ would not be enough to earn an SDG classification. This means that Dimensions can identify grants that support sustainability improvements both explicitly – eg, by mentioning the UN’s sustainable development goals – and implicitly.

After extracting all UKRI grants indexed in Dimensions from eight UK research councils between 2011-2020, we applied the SDG classification to determine the proportion of UKRI funding that supports the SDGs.

Figure 2: The sum in GBP of SDG-classified UKRI grants awarded between 2011 and 2020

By applying the 17 SDG-classified grants records and publications in Dimensions, we can evaluate how funders support research towards more sustainable development. Figure 2 provides an overview of the sum in GBP of UKRI grants that have supported sustainable development research between 2011 and 2020. We have selected a public research funder as an exemplar for this analysis on the basis that a competitive public research funder, such as UKRI, is the origin of most public research funding in the UK, with arguably the most impactful strategic waypoint for research on sustainable development. Such funders have considerable influence on the type and focus of research conducted.

Figure 3: The total number of UKRI grants with and without an SDG classification awarded between 2011 and 2020

Figure 3 shows the total number of SDG-related UKRI grants versus all UKRI grants, using the same base data as for Figure 2. There is a notable increase in the number of grants awarded after 2016, the year the UN SDGs were implemented. The graph also reveals that an average of 24.9% of all UKRI grants each year aimed to support sustainable development research, with a growth rate of 218.0% over the period. This is a higher rate than for all UKRI grants in the period, which was 128% over the same period. The Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) UK aid strategy is administered through UKRI and aims to assist in making progress on the global effort to address the UN SDGs. It has committed £1.5bn funding to address the UN SDGs between 2016 and 2021. This has also contributed to both the number and value of grants for research with a focus on sustainability.

Unlike Figure 3, Figure 2 does not show a similar trend for awarded amounts. This could indicate an increased number of smaller sums of funding per grant awarded by UKRI.

The proportion of UKRI funding with SDG classifications by year shows an approximately linear growth, with SDG funding having almost tripled in 2020 compared to 2011. This trend is very likely to continue and we may see an even greater increase in funding as we move towards the 2030 deadline of achieving the Goals, especially as UKRI have committed to supporting the ambitions of the UK government’s aid strategy and progressing the UN SDGs¹. If and how the recent adjustments to GCRF funding by the UK government will affect the grant landscape and visibility remains to be seen.

How is sustainability research funding distributed across the 17 SDGs?

Figure 4: The value and number of UKRI grants awarded by SDG classification between 2011 and 2020

Figure 4 sheds light on the focus of UKRI’s funding in support of the UN 2030 Agenda. The graph shows the total SDG funding amounts by the total number of SDG grants awarded, as classified in Dimensions. It is clear that SDG7, ’Affordable and Clean Energy’, appears to have been prioritised as a funding objective. It has the greatest number of grants awarded and the highest total funding amount compared to other SDGs over the 10-year period. Similarly SDG13, ‘Climate Action’, is also prioritised. Given the climate crisis we face and the role that energy has to play in this, it makes sense that increased funding would be focused in these areas, as the transition towards reaching climate neutrality is now so urgent.

How is funding split across the three pillars of sustainability; societal, environmental, and economic?

We can analyse SDG-related UKRI funding in Dimensions through the lens of the three pillars of sustainability (societal, environmental and economic, also depicted as the ‘wedding cake’, as seen in a previous blog) as a means of assessing the proportion of UKRI research funding that is concentrated in these three components.

Figure 5 visualises the prioritisation of UKRI’s sustainability research funding by each pillar of sustainability. The size of each circle is directly proportional to the total amount of funding that has been awarded to support the SDGs within each pillar.  The big hitters in the Social pillar are SDG7, ‘Affordable and Green Energy’, and SDG3, ‘Good Health and Well Being’. In the Environmental Pillar funding is prioritised in SDG13, ‘Climate Action’, and for the Economic Pillar SDG8, ‘Decent Work and Economic Growth’, and SDG12, ‘Responsible Consumption and Production’, are the most highly funded research areas.

Figure 5: The value of UKRI’s sustainability research funding between 2011 and 2020, split by the three pillars of sustainability; societal, environmental and economic sustainability

Conclusion

UKRI has allocated close to £10 billion or 28% of all its awards from 2011 to 2020 in ways that would offer support to the SDGs. Grants appear to be more likely than publications to receive SDG classifications. One reason for this is that a grant abstract is more focused on what needs to be achieved and the intention behind the funding, while a publication is reporting on what has been achieved, which may not be as comprehensive in terms of its SDG focus. Our showcasing of the grants data here shows how this funding has been allocated to each of the SDGs.

This blog shows that funding research aligning with sustainable development is prominent on UKRI’s funding programme agenda and that research capacity in this area is growing. With research and innovation having such a vital role to play in helping to find sustainable solutions to address global challenges, it is reassuring to see that SDG related research by a competitive funder is so extensive. It is also particularly gratifying to see that all 17 Goals are included to some extent in UKRI funding.

References

1: UKRI announces International Development Research Programme Awards

The post How is UK Funding Allocated to Support Sustainability Research? appeared first on Digital Science.

March 20th is celebrated around the world as the International Day of Happiness. This day of celebration and learning was founded by the United Nations back in 2012, and this year is no exception, as the UN released their latest Happiness Report. As part of our SDG blog series on the research driving us closer to meeting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) we asked Digital Science’s very own Well-Being Trainer, Danielle Feger, to tell us more about the science behind SDG 3, Good Health and Well-Being, and how to use the powers of positive psychology to keep us centred in the midst of a global pandemic. With thanks to Juergen Wastl for his assistance in delving into Dimensions to uncover the hottest trends in happiness research.

About the Authors

As a stress counsellor and wellbeing trainer, Danielle developed her own well-being concept, Equillbrium4Wellbeing, which is based on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Mindfulness and Yoga. She leads the well-being programme at Digital Science and runs workshops on stress management and well-being in the UK as well as in German-speaking countries. Her programmes support employees’ mental well-being, helping them to shift from ‘coping’ to ‘thriving’.

Previously, Danielle had a long career in research development at the University of Cambridge where she gained extensive experience in fundraising and managing international research projects. In addition, she had the opportunity to coach researchers and academics and has established a mentoring programme for early-career researchers.

Juergen Wastl is Director of Academic Relations and Consultancy at Digital Science. He previously headed up the Research Information team at the University of Cambridge’s Research Strategy Office and worked for BASF managing BMBF-funded projects internationally.

The History of Happiness Research

Zhuangzi, who was born about 2,300 years ago in China, probably wrote the first piece of work in history devoted to happiness; an essay called “Supreme Happiness”. Since then, a total of almost 39k research publications on happiness have been added to this corpus of knowledge. Figure 1 shows how many publications have been released each year over the last 25, and the steady increase in the rate of research outputs relating to happiness, where the word “happiness” features in the title and abstract of the publication.

Happiness is a human emotion, but does happiness research take place wherever there are people? Not quite. Figure 2 shows the global distribution of publications relating to happiness. The US has had the highest overall happiness research output with about 7,700 publications, followed by the UK with almost 2,700. China (with 1,386), Canada (with 1,375) and Germany (with 1,257) make it a close-run race for 3rd place, while other countries such as Australia, the Netherlands, and Japan are hot on their heels.

In recent years, the increase in the number of publications relating to happiness outpaced the general increase of publications overall: Between 2017 to 2020, the number of happiness-related publications increased by 27.5%, whereas the general increase was 19.6%.

Measuring the Impact of Happiness Research

The impact of happiness research can be measured in traditional citations as well as in alternative metrics (or altmetrics) that track the real-world attention received by a piece of research. When we look at publication citations, we can see there have been 350,000 citations of research from US publications, 92,000 from UK publications, and 47,000 from Canadian publications. It is interesting to note that, although China has published a comparable amount of research around happiness within Canada, citation of this work is much lower at 14,000. Is this down to a research language barrier, or something else?

When we track the volume of research publications over time, we see that research into happiness and subsequent publications start increasing significantly in the early 2000s. This interest in happiness is connected to the study of Positive Psychology.

Positive Psychology

For about 200 years, Psychology research mainly focused on the study of disease. In the 1990s, psychologists started to look at what increases well-being and what makes people happier. Since its beginning, Positive Psychology has developed significantly; millions of dollars have been invested in research, and thousands of findings have been published.

The focus on happiness is growing everywhere: Countries adopt happiness policies, companies and educational institutions introduce wellbeing and happiness programmes, and books about happiness are regularly on bestseller lists. The team at Digital Science understand the value and importance of employee happiness and have invested in boosting well-being among their employees through a range of courses and sessions led by my organisation.

The UN Happiness Report 2020 and Sustainable Development Goals

Chapter 6 of the 2020 World Happiness Report takes a close look at the link between SDGs and happiness and shows that the countries with a higher SDG index score tend to do better in terms of subjective well-being.

If we ask people what their ultimate goal is in life, most would say they want to be happy. Happiness is something we all strive to find. We believe that we will be happy once we achieve certain things like status, higher income or more possessions. However, research has shown that these things do not increase our happiness. Happiness is a state of inner fulfilment, not the gratification of inexhaustible desires for outward things.

So how do we achieve happiness?

One of the main points I teach in my programmes is to embrace experiences. Plenty of research findings show that experiences can increase our happiness. Let’s break this down from the perspective of positive psychology, to better make sense of the things that make us happy – and how we can achieve a greater sense of well being and happiness.

Danielle’s Guide to Achieving Happiness Through Experiences

1. There is no hedonic adaptation to experiences
We adapt quickly to possessions: Whenever we get what we are seeking, it quickly becomes less valuable, so we return to our original baseline of happiness and the cycle repeats like a treadmill. Experiences are temporary and there is no time to get used to them. Since the stimuli in experiences aren’t constant, we keep paying attention to them.

2. Experiences cannot be quantified or compared
Possessions foster comparisons but we tend to think of experiences more on their own terms, rather than in comparison with other things. Experiences are so individual that we have no reference points to compare them to or to quantify the relative value of any two experiences.

3. Experiences give us unforgettable memories and increase positive emotions such as joy, inspiration, pride, confidence or gratitude
According to Barbara Fredrickson, when people experience positive emotions, their minds broaden and they open up to new possibilities and ideas. At the same time, positive emotions help people build their personal wellbeing resources, ranging from physical, to intellectual, to social resources.

4. Experiences increase our engagement and enhance our sense of achievement
Activities that meet our need for engagement flood the body with positive neurotransmitters and hormones that elevate our sense of happiness. ‘Flow’ engagement stretches our intelligence, skills, and emotional capabilities. Achievement is not just about a strong sense of success or ‘winning’ – it also refers to how much we challenge ourselves in positive and progressive ways that enable us to further develop our strengths and skills, both practically and emotionally.

5. Experiences help us connect with people and improve social relationships
Relationships and social connections are a crucial part of our sense of wellbeing and happiness. Sharing experiences connects us to other people more than sharing consumption. Since experiences are very individual, jealousy and envy aren’t as much of an issue as with possessions. Therefore we are more interested in hearing about other people’s experiences than about their latest purchases.

6. Experiences help define our purpose and passions
We are the sum total of our experiences or as Oliver Wendell Holmes put it: “A mind that is stretched by new experiences can never go back to its old dimensions.” A new iPhone doesn’t define who we are, but having travelled in various countries truly enriches our lives and forms our identity.

Further Reading

• “Buy Experiences, Not Things” The Atlantic
• The UN Happiness Report
• Richard Layard, co-editor of the annual World Happiness Report (with Jeffrey Sachs and John Helliwell) is also co-founder of the movement “Action for Happiness” that brings together like-minded people from all walks of life and helps them take practical action, drawing on the latest scientific research. AfH is backed by leading experts from diverse fields including psychology, education, economics and social innovation.

The post The Pursuit of Happiness – Researching Good Health and Well-Being appeared first on Digital Science.

Juergen Wastl is Director of Academic Relations and Consultancy at Digital Science. He previously headed up the Research Information team at the University of Cambridge’s Research Strategy Office and worked for BASF managing BMBF-funded projects internationally.

Briony Fane is a Research Analyst at Digital Science. She has a higher education background, having gained a PhD from City, University of London, and has worked as both a researcher and a research manager.

Bo Alroe has worked with research management and administration since 2004,  and currently as Director of Strategy with Digital Science. Bo is from Aalborg, Denmark, where he studied and currently lives with his family.

Introduction

In this analysis, we have used Dimensions on Google BigQuery to analyse the Impact Case Studies from REF 2014, the first exercise to evaluate the impact of research outside of academia. Impact Case Studies form an important part of all university REF submissions, with each describing both the research and its impact beyond academia. The inclusion of impact as a component of the REF reflects a growing interest in demonstrating the value of academic research in society.

Of the 6,975 Impact Case Studies submitted to REF 2014, 6,737 were included in the publicly available HEFCE dataset. Each case study has a unique digital object identifier (DOIs). We have taken these DOIs and used Dimensions on Google BigQuery to connect the REF Impact Case Studies to SDG categories using Dimensions’ SDG classification scheme launched last year.

Using Google BigQuery to connect external datasets to Dimensions to gain important insights

Thanks to HEFCE’s (now Research England) freely available database of REF research submissions, we were able to merge this with Dimensions. By applying Dimensions’ SDG filter it was easy to ascertain the proportion of research output associated with sustainable development submitted to REF 2014 underpinning the Impact Case Studies. We were also able to determine other trends within this information, including ‘types of impact’ associated with the case studies using publicly available code in the Dimensions BigQuery Lab; these include technological, societal, environmental, political, legal, cultural, health and economic types of impact, as defined in the post-REF report we published with King’s College London and HEFCE (now Research England).

In this case, we were able to leverage Dimensions data by enriching it with additional information in the form of impact case study data via Google BigQuery. This levels the playing field across databases, allowing users to carry out informative analysis and gain a greater depth of understanding of REF Impact data. This methodology provided the basis for the following two analyses.

Prevalence of SDG-related research underpinning Impact Case Studies

By analysing the number of SDG-related research publications from total publications between 1993 to 2013 (the two decades before REF 2014 submission) and the number and percentage submitted to the ‘output’ (REF2) and ‘impact’ (REF3) elements of REF 2014, the data show that SDG-related research was significant before the UN SDG goals were introduced in 2015. We see that proportionately more research with a sustainable development focus was submitted to demonstrate impact in REF 2014 than for research outputs. Interestingly, there was 25% overlap of impact case study research publication references with outputs submitted to REF2 in 2014¹.

Alignment of SDGs within the Dimensions categorisation and REF-related ‘types of impact’

SDGs can be clustered into three overarching pillars: Environmental, Economic and Social. The Stockholm Resilience Institute³ has assembled the SDGs by these overarching groups in a diagram that resembles a wedding cake (with Social labelled Biosphere here). This hierarchical aggregation of the individual goals allows us to better visualise and analyse overall trends, and enables comparisons with the REF Main Panel structure (A-D) to retrieve a high level view of sustainable development goals in REF Impact.

Underpinning research categorised by the HEFCE ‘impact types’ and by the three pillars of SDGs as outlined above nicely validates the outcome of the SDG classification system in Dimensions. Table 2 reveals that 62% of underpinning research classified within SDG13, Climate Action, correlates with HEFCE’s Environmental impact type. 45% of research classified as SDG3 Good Health and Well-Being correlates with HEFCE’s Health impact type, and 47% of research associated with SDG16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions correlates with HEFCE’s Societal impact type.

As we have already noted, the time period for REF 2014 precedes the formalisation of the UN SDGs but, as we demonstrated in our last blog, UK research exhibits a high proportion of SDG-tagged publications. This is even more pronounced in the underpinning research accompanying the REF Impact Case Studies, showcasing the existing contribution of research in the context of sustainable development to both ‘Impact’ and ‘Excellence’ in the REF 2014 submission.

Comparing citation averages for SDG-related underpinning research versus non SDG-related underpinning research

REF Impact Case Studies were categorised into eight types by HEFCE (now Research England): Cultural, Economic, Environmental, Health, Legal, Political, Societal and Technological. Figure 2 outlines the citation averages for underpinning research publications categorised by impact type that have been SDG-tagged in Dimensions, versus those not SDG-tagged. In particular, we see that citation averages are twice as high for SDG-related publications associated with Economic and Environmental impact types than those that are not SDG-related. Conversely, citation averages for underpinning research outputs associated with Technological and Cultural impact types fall below the citation average of those outputs that are not associated with SDGs. It could be that, for both Environmental and Economic impact types, there is an existing awareness of SDG-related sustainable development thinking, particularly environmental impact; we know that climate change didn’t emerge in 2015 with the introduction of the SDGs. For research related to Technological impact, the focus may have been on more non-sustainable development related technologies.

Looking ahead, we might expect that research underpinning Impact Case Studies in REF 2021 will see a notable increase in SDG-related publications as we continue the UN’s decade of action for realising the sustainable development goals.

Weaving the four REF Main Panels into the story provides us with a slightly different insight into the contribution that the overarching REF Panels made to sustainable development research in REF 2014, as seen in Figure 3:

• Main Panel C (social sciences) contributes most and is evident in all SDGs across all HEFCE impact types. This Panel contains the greatest quantity of underpinning research publications associated with Impact Case Studies overall and confirms the contribution of this Panel to REF2 outputs
• Unsurprisingly, Main Panel A (medicine, health and life sciences) contributes predominantly through SDG3 Health and Well-Being, and across to HEFCE’s Health impact type related Impact Case Studies
• Main Panel B (physical sciences, engineering and maths) mostly contributes to SDG7 Affordable and Clean Energy, and SDG13 Climate Action through to Technology and Environmental ‘impact types’
• Finally, Main Panel D (arts and humanities) which accommodates a more diverse portfolio of underpinning research associated with SDGs, but dominated by SDG16 associated research, does not solely contribute to cultural impact type categorised case studies as might be expected

Research in the context of sustainable development (using Dimensions SDG Classification scheme) acts as a pivot between HEFCE’s ‘Impact Type’ and the four REF Main Panels, showcasing the diverse interaction between the underpinning research in the Impact Case Studies component of REF 2014, its discipline and contribution to the UN SDGs, even before these were formally implemented.

Conclusion

This blog has revealed a starting point for us looking at the scope for interpreting SDGs through the lens of Impact. Utilising the reference lists submitted with the case studies provided us with a context within which to explore research associated with sustainable development in REF 2014, ahead of the formalisation of the UN SDGs in 2015.

Using Google BigQuery allows us to draw interesting conclusions about the impact of research submitted to REF 2014. By integrating Dimensions data with a relevant external dataset we have been able to showcase the potential for future application in developing insights on and beyond sustainable development with impact case studies from the forthcoming REF 2021.

Footnotes

1: The document can be viewed here

2: Each underpinning research publication may be associated with more than one SDG classification. The total number of publications we are working with is 21,829 but, with the overlap of SDG- and UoA-associations, these 21,829 publications are represented 32,684 times

3: The SDG ‘wedding cake’, developed at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University by the Centre’s science director Carl Folke

The post In search of SDGs in REF Impact Case Studies appeared first on Digital Science.

Juergen Wastl is Director of Academic Relations and Consultancy at Digital Science. He previously headed up the Research Information team at the University of Cambridge’s Research Strategy Office and worked for BASF managing BMBF-funded projects internationally.

Briony Fane is a Research Analyst at Digital Science. She has a higher education background, having gained a PhD from City, University of London, and has worked as both a researcher and a research manager.

Bo Alroe has worked with research management and administration since 2004,  and currently as Director of Strategy with Digital Science. Bo is from Aalborg, Denmark, where he studied and lives with his family.

Introduction

Assessment of research in the UK helps fund and shape the development of academic disciplines in Universities. The recurring seven-year cycles of assessment exercises that Higher Education takes part in has a long history, starting in 1986 and evolving and culminating in the latest versions known as the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) in 2001 and 2008 and the Research Excellence Framework (REF) in 2014 and 2021. The outcomes of these exercises tell us about the state of research that is taking place across the United Kingdom, from its academic strength and impact to the significance placed on research from social, economic, clinical and policy perspectives.

Reflecting on the last assessment exercise, REF 2014, outcomes would endorse that the Higher Education sector performs exceptionally well both academically, and in respect of the impact of its research in a real-world setting, as our in-depth post-REF 2014 analysis revealed.

The UN SDGs seek to tackle the biggest societal challenges in our world today, in part by asking us to fundamentally question long-held beliefs about economic growth and their compatibility with maintaining a healthy balance with the natural world. As higher education institutions have a uniquely important role to play in delivering solutions to the SDGs it would make sense that a proportion of the research submitted to the UK’s assessment exercises will have clear links to the SDGs. This focus on societal, economic and environmental challenges facing the world can be well captured by the need for the provision of impact (showcased by case studies) that was introduced in REF 2014.

We have used Digital Science’s Dimensions to shed light on the contribution of SDG-related literature to the UK’s REF 2014 submission. Dimensions offers a comprehensive collection of interlinked data in a single platform that reflects the entire research lifecycle. As Dimensions covers research inputs, outputs and data on pathways to impact, it is uniquely suited to teasing out contributions to SDG-related research. For both SDG and REF Unit of Assessment (UoA) classifications, Dimensions offers filters developed using supervised machine learning based on custom-made training sets. As a consequence, the UK’s assessment of research can be viewed in the context of sustainable development.

We start by examining REF 2014, in an attempt to ascertain whether SDG-aligned research is growing in content beyond the normal base rate growth of research as we progress towards the deadline for achieving the Goals in 2030¹.  Dimensions includes classification filters based on the REF 2021 UoA classification system comprising 34 UoAs.  These can be easily applied to the previous assessment exercises, despite research areas being defined slightly differently in previous assessments,  with 67 and 36 UoAs in REF 2014 and RAE 2008 respectively. Dimensions was used to retrieve SDG-classified research publications that were submitted in the REF 2014 period from 2008 to 2013.

Exploring REF 2014 and SDG-related research outputs in Dimensions

We start the blog series with examples of the percentage of SDG-related research submitted per UoA in REF 2014, and will address the following research questions:

1: Is research in the context of Sustainable Development submitted and deemed excellent research as defined by REF 2014?

2: What can the spread of SDG-related research submitted to REF 2014 tell us?

3: Can trends be found in SDG research that contributes not only to REF 2014 but across all years that have been part of research assessment? Is there evidence of SDG associated research before the SDGs were formally implemented in January 2016²? Will we see a steady increase in growth of SDG linked research across the research assessment timespan?

Table 1: Examples of the proportion of SDG-related research submitted to UoAs in REF 2014

Table 1 provides specific examples of the proportion of SDG-related research submitted in the UoAs featured. It highlights not only the importance of SDGs to academic research in units of assessment in clinical sciences and areas of social sciences, but also areas in the physical sciences where SDG research does not contribute significantly to REF 2014

1: SDG research is ‘excellent’ research

We can show that SDG tagged research is considered ‘excellent’ research in the UK in the context of the national research evaluation exercise.  By its very nature, we recognise that SDG-related research is, to varying degrees, ‘applied research’ because it addresses societal challenges, and ‘excellent’ research because it contributes to the national research assessment submissions. The evidence for this lies in the fact that, for research outputs submitted to the REF, we can identify what percentage are tagged as SDG research in Dimensions. If the percentage of SDG research is high, it demonstrates its level of excellence as perceived by the submitting academic and institution. The UK’s REF 2014 submission of research outputs has, in a number of Units of Assessment, a higher content of SDG-associated research than the average across the timeframe of the exercise.

Figure 1: Number of SDG-related research outputs submitted to REF 2014Figure 2: SDG-related research outputs submitted to REF 2014 as a percentage of total submissions per Unit of Assessment

2: What can SDG-related research tell us about the UK’s REF 2014 submission?

SDG tagged publications vary in number and share (see Figures 1 and 2 above) across the UoAs however trends, or hot spots, of individual SDGs per UoA are revealed. For example, SDG7, Affordable and Clean Energy (green) across Main Panel B UoAs in the physical and technological focussed UoAs, and SDG 3, Good Health and Wellbeing among Clinical Medicine and Life Sciences based UoAs (red), we see that SDG-related research coverage is considerable.

In order to have a summary view of the REF 2014 submission (and beyond) at the level of Main Panels, aggregating research in the context of SDGs helps to give us an overall picture with two main insights. Applying the SDG filter across the evaluation time frames of RAE 2008, REF 2014 and the current REF 2021, we can affiliate the SDG tagged research to the Main Panels over a period of 20 years (noting that the main panels have remained the same, but the UoA structure slightly varied across the three assessment exercises).

Figure 3: SDG-related research outputs submitted to REF 2014

Looking at figure 3, the first main insight that is immediately apparent for Main Panels A and B, which focus on STEM subjects, that there is a steady increase in SDG-related research, which for Panel A (in particular UoAs 1-3) climbs sharply as we get closer to 2020.  This can be explained by an increase in COVID-19 publications in the context of SDG3 ‘Good Health and Well-Being’.  The second insight is that when looking at Panel C, which has a focus on the social sciences, there is a notable peak in publications in 2013 which is the year for submission of publications to REF 2014, with a marked decline immediately thereafter. This potential REF 2014 effect seems very likely after we made a comparison with SDG tagged publications classified by UoAs across the same timeframe for Germany, seen in figure 4, which does not undergo the same research evaluation exercise, and reveals no marked spike and decline in publications categorised in UoAs related to social sciences between 2013 and 2014.  Panel D, which covers research in the arts and humanities and includes much more heterogeneous output types, make SDG and REF classifications less reliable as many outputs go beyond those having identifying features for classification purposes.

Figure 4: SDG-related research outputs in Germany, mapped onto the REF classification scheme in Dimensions

3: Can trends be found in SDG research that contributes not only to REF 2014 but across all years that have been part of research assessment?

When we look at year-on-year growth of SDG related research in each UoA, across both the REF 2014 submission period as well as across all RAE and REF time periods, we observe that the REF 2014 submission of research outputs has a higher content of SDG-related research than non-SDG research. Based on this, it would be our expectation to see REF 2021 contain even more SDG-related research, continuing the upward trend we see in previous assessment periods, where SDG research outpaces normal growth in research submitted to REF.

Conclusion

It has been argued that none of the SDGs can be achieved without the contribution of research carried out in higher education institutions.  Universities have the ability to generate, translate and disseminate knowledge relevant to achieving the SDGs. They also have the potential to increase societal impact through translational research.  Given this, using Dimensions to probe the vast corpus of research relating to both REF 2014 and SDGs and how the two entities interact will go some way to providing insight into the contribution of academic research to the United Nations Sustainable Development Agenda.

Footnotes

1: The SDG classification system is the most recent addition to classification systems in the Dimensions database and is not yet fully developed, not only in terms of the complexities involved in defining SDGs but also in difficulties with SDG language. It is rapidly evolving with more SDG-related research being classified on an ongoing basis

2: It is important to note that, although the SDGs were not implemented at the time of the two RAE exercises in 2001 and 2008, there was a previous global action plan, the Millenium Development Goals, which set out to reverse the poverty, hunger and disease affecting billions of people, therefore research associated with SDGs was already in evidence. It is likely that more funding was made available at this time to address SDGs

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