Assessments under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

The United Nations announced its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development worldwide in 2015. Comprehensive assessments of member states’ performance towards achieving the related UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have since become a major challenge for national and subnational governments. This article presents a bibliometric analysis on the assessment of SDGs, at both the general and specific levels, based on 418 publications obtained from Scopus. The general level of analysis includes the number, types, and subject areas of documents published each year, as well as considerations such as the most-cited publications and the leading authors, journals, countries, institutional affiliations, and funders. The specific level of analysis includes a study of the relevant concepts in the publications and their relationships, allowing for the identification of predominant assessments under the 2030 Agenda, and of the most-often evaluated SDGs. Results indicated a focus on measuring impacts and risks, with SDGs 3, 6, 13, 7, 8, and 4 having been assessed the most often among the 17 SDGs, which is consistent with findings in prevalent subject areas such as environmental sciences, social sciences, medicine, and energy. Future works should address assessments under the 2030 Agenda more comprehensively, including analyses on trade-offs among the SDGs and on the transversal nature of some of these goals.