In May 2020 we released our report, Contextualizing Sustainable Development Research, showcasing the growth in research around the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We are following last month’s blog post on the UK’s research contributions to the UN SDGs observed through national assessment exercises with more analysis from Dr Juergen Wastl, Dr Briony Fane and Bo Alroe from Digital Science’s Consultancy Team. In this post, they focus on the impact of the UK’s research excellence framework (REF) submissions in relation to the UN SDGs.
Juergen Wastl is Director of Academic Relations and Consultancy at Digital Science…
Briony Fane is a Research Analyst at Digital Science…
Bo Alroe has worked with research management and administration since 2004, and currently as Director of Strategy with Digital Science…
Introduction
In this analysis, we have used Dimensions on Google BigQuery to analyse the Impact Case Studies from REF 2014…
Of the 6,975 Impact Case Studies submitted to REF 2014, 6,737 were included in the publicly available HEFCE dataset…
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…
Prevalence of SDG-related research underpinning Impact Case Studies
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…
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…
Looking ahead, we might expect that research underpinning Impact Case Studies in REF 2021…
- Main Panel C (social sciences) contributes most and is evident in all SDGs…
- Main Panel A contributes predominantly through SDG3 Health and Well-Being…
- Main Panel B mostly contributes to SDG7 and SDG13…
- Main Panel D accommodates a more diverse portfolio…
Conclusion
This blog has revealed a starting point for us looking at the scope for interpreting SDGs through the lens of Impact…
Footnotes
1: The document can be viewed here
2: Each underpinning research publication may be associated with more than one SDG classification…
3: The SDG ‘wedding cake’, developed at the Stockholm Resilience Centre…
