Comparing Academia's Perception of Needed SDG Research to SDG Progress Reports and Known SDG Synergies and Tradeoffs

Abstract

<p>The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) are a set of 17 goals that was released by the United Nations (UN) in 2015. Each goal has a target figure that countries and, ideally, the world should aim to reach in order to create sustainability within that sector for current and future generations. Seven years after the SDGs were released, thousands of studies and academic articles have promoted the SDGs, as well as regular updates that have been released by the UN on goal progress specific to each country. In addition, multiple studies have highlighted synergies and tradeoffs between SDGs that have the potential to significantly influence goal completion (Biggeri et. Al, 2019; Moyer & Bohl, 2019; Jose-Serrano, 2022; Zhao et. al, 2021). With this information in mind, this study aims to conduct a large-scale network analysis of research articles concerning SDG progress to answer the following questions: Which SDGs receive the most attention from researchers? What are the perceptions in academia regarding the synergies/ trade-offs between the SDGs? The network analysis will be conducted using the search engine SCOPUS resulting in hundreds of retrieved papers for each category within the SDGs. Results from this study will be compared to current SDG progress and known synergies and tradeoffs within the SDGs in order to determine how the perception of the SDGs compare with research conclusions and known SDG goal progress. This information will serve as an indication of which goals, synergies, or tradeoffs researchers and industries are aware of and readily researching and which of these categories needs more attention within academic circles. The ultimate goal for this research is that the results can be used as a tool to advocate for what SDG research is most needed in order for SDG goals to reach completion by 2030.</p>