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The role of higher education institutions (HEIs) in the path to sustainability: analysis of sustainable development goals (SDGs) from a scientific perspective
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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
The sustainable development goals (SDGs) are presented as the promising and critical success
to respond to the societal challenges in worldwide. It supposes a change in comparison with the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): all countries and all stakeholders (e.g. enterprises,
organizations, civil society, policy-makers…) need to be involved (lemma ‘No one left behind")
in the path towards sustainability (Brown, 2006). On this regard, as Salvia (2019) stated success
of the SDGs will depend on the strong collaboration between the different actors. In 2017,
Walter Leal Filho, Ulisses Miranda Azeiteiro, et al. (2017) refers to the SDGs as an opportunity
to encourage sustainability research, reviewing the importance given to the research of the
SDGs', which SDGs have already been implemented and in which countries.
One of the central actors is higher education institutions (HEIs) who have the lead to respond
to this enormous challenge. In this regard, they should be leaders in the search for solutions and
alternatives to current environmental problems and agents of change (Hesselbarth and
Schaltegger, 2014). The University within the framework of the 2030 Agenda can collaborate
through teaching, research, knowledge transfer and innovation in promoting policies of
sustainability and commitment not only to the environment but also to the achievement of all
other sustainable goals (e.g. eradication of hunger and poverty extreme, health and well-being,
quality education…). On this regard, authors such as Leal (2019) states that it is important to
align universities with the research on SDGs. About this pillar, one way to analyze how
universities are doing research on this topic is through bibliometric studies. There are different
studies that analyze sustainability or sustainable development (Hassan and Zhu, 2014, Olawumi
and Chan, 2018) as well as in universities (Bizerril, 2018). However, few studies have analyzed
the production specifically on SDGs at Universities. Nakamura (2019) analyzes 2,800
documents related to the SDGs, as well as topic analysis. On the other hand, Bautista-Puig
(2019) analyzes the core of scientific production on the MDGs and the SDGs with 4,532
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documents and highlights the growth in the last 4 years, which coincides with the launch of the
SDGs, in addition to the interrelations between the different SDGs.
This study analyzes the scientific output of development goals research from 2000-2017 based
on Web of Science, with the aim to map the global research of sustainability at HEIs. A total of
25,185 bibliographic records were analyzed. The purpose of this paper is to present a
comprehensive review of the literature of HEIs about the research that these institutions are
doing related to MDGs and SDGs. This paper also analyzes the topics in which are involved
based on keyword co-occurrence classification of the SDGs by creating an ad-hoc glossary.
The findings reveal the important participation of HEIs on this research (85.71%) and an
increase of participation over time (660 institutions in 2000-2005 to 1771 institutions involved
in 2012-2017). In terms of specialization measured by an Activity Index (AI), some institutions
present a higher production and a higher specialization on the topic; however, others present
less production but higher specialization. Regarding the topics, health (especially in developing
countries), women and socio-economic aspects are the most prominent ones. Moreover, it is
observed an increase of the topics related to the launch of the SDGs, including topics such as
governance or policy denoting the increase of the political interest on those issues. This study
provides an overview of how Universities are doing research on SDGs to respond to major
societal challenges and could be useful for the policymakers in order to promote the research
agenda on this topic.
Description
This research was supported by the predoctoral contract BES-2015-075461.
Keywords
Sustainable development goals Millennium development goals Higher education institutions Bibliometrics Scientometrics
Citation
Bautista-Puig, N., Aleixo, A.M., Sanz-Casado, E. & Azeiteiro, U. (2019). The role of higher education institutions (HEIs) in the path to sustainability: analysis of sustainable development goals (SDGs) from a scientific perspective [Abstract]. Apresentado na 1ª Conferência Campus Sustentável, Porto