Public participation is crucial for policy-making and can contribute to strengthening democracies and decision-making. Public participation can help to address sustainability challenges and plays a key role in attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While the SDGs are policy concepts, there has been limited research conducted on how the public perceives the SDGs. Public participation in scientific research has been carried out through citizen science (CS). This paper analyzes the public's perception of the SDGs through CS and how the public can participate in their implementation. The paper uses the OSDG community platform, a citizen science platform with >2000 participants, to analyze public perception of the SDGs. A set of 40,062 excerpts of text (v2023-01-01), a topic modeling and agreement scores by using CorTexT Manager software, was analyzed. The results show that some SDGs, e.g. health (SDG3) or life below water (SDG14), have higher levels of agreement from the public, whilst for other SDGs the public disagree on their perception, (e.g. zero hunger). The paper shows that issues affecting citizens' daily lives (e.g. in People related goals) tend to have a higher level of agreement among volunteers, while economic issues and directives have greater discrepancies. The results provide an overview of the differences in public perception on the SDGs and their implementation. The misperceptions regarding the SDGs should be reduced to achieve a better implementation, improve public participation, and help policy-making processes.

Purpose

Government-owned companies (GOCs), such as ports, have engaged in efforts to become more sustainable. Most of such efforts have been technological and policy ones and mainly focusing on the environment, with limited research on organisational change management. This paper aims to provide insights into how ports have been addressing sustainability change forces and pressures.

Design/methodology/approach

Twelve semi-structured interviews were conducted with top-level directors and sustainability managers, representing ports across Europe’s maritime regions and a range of port types and sizes. The interviews were analysed using grounded theory’s constant comparative analysis.

Findings

The findings highlighted that the ports’ success in their process to become more sustainable depends on how they take advantage of the thrust forces and reduce the drag ones. The findings serve to develop the “ports’ sustainability change management framework”, with five stages: reactive, proactive, transactive, interactive, and sustainable port.

Practical implications

Ports, and other GOCs, should capitalise on their private–public nature in their contribution to making societies more sustainable by adopting a holistic perspective and interactive changes.

Originality/value

This paper provides a dynamic perspective on corporate sustainability efforts, particularly on GOCs, through organisational change management complementing technocentric and managerial approaches.

Carbon footprint (CF) research has received increasing attention in recent years, as evidenced by a rise in publications and citations, reflecting a growing concern for the environmental impact of human activities. However, the alignment of this scientific literature with the three dimensions of sustainability performance provided by the TBL paradigm (people, planet, and profit) has received limited attention. This study addresses this research gap by undertaking a large-scale bibliometric analysis of 9032 Web of Science (WoS) publications from 1992 to 2020. At the macro (journals) and micro (papers) levels, a methodology approach to classify research publications according to TBL dimensions was designed. The results indicate that the output and impact of CF research are balanced with respect to the environmental (planet) and economic (prosperity/profit) dimensions, while the social impact is balanced with respect to the people+profit dimensions. Other than that, “Affordable and Clean Energy” (3761 publications) and “Climate Action” (3091 publications) are the most frequently represented (and interconnected) objectives. The results obtained contribute to a greater understanding of the contribution of CF research to the attainment of the SDGs.

Sustainability has been proposed to address societal challenges. A number of efforts have been undertaken to implement sustainability, particularly through frameworks such as tools, initiatives and approaches (TIAs). Most of the research on the implementation efforts has been in the corporate context. This paper is aimed at analysing the implementation of TIAs in academic research. A bibliometric analysis of twenty TIAs during the period 1961–2020 was carried out to analyse their implementation in academic research. The results highlight that there has been research published on all the TIAs analysed. The TIAs have a better balance and interrelations between the sustainability dimensions in their implementation than in the theory. The results show that for a better implementation of TIAs in academic research it is necessary to address sustainability dimensions (economic, environmental, social, and time) in a holistic and balanced way considering alignment of general and specific efforts, i.e. TIAs, and congruence (linking ‘theory’ and ‘implementation’). The results were integrated to propose a ‘Sustainability Implementation Framework’ (SIF), which is divided into three levels (i.e., Initiatives, Approaches, and Tools). The TIAs implementation should follow more strictly the definitions, or, perhaps, the TIAs definitions should be redefined to encompass the insights from their implementation.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) have been at the forefront in creating and breaking paradigms, and educating the future decision-makers, entrepreneurs, and leaders. In the last decade, there have been many efforts to develop sustainability competences in HEIs to ensure that students are prepared for challenges in making societies more sustainable. Recent discourses have focussed on how educators use pedagogical approaches to develop such competences, which has begun to create a sustainability competences paradigm. This research focuses on the benefits and challenges of teaching sustainability, the use of pedagogical approaches, and the developmentof competences. A survey was sent to 4099 European HEI educators, with 319 full responses obtained for the open-ended questions. The data was analysed using quantitative content analysis and network analysis. The results provide insights into the rankings of the benefits, and challenges in teaching, competences, and pedagogical approaches. The co-occurrence maps show a high students' awareness and engagement when educators use pedagogical approaches other than lecturing, and they focus on providing a practice-oriented perspective. The research discusses that in order to develop a sustainability competences paradigm the benefits of teaching sustainability, using pedagogical approaches, and development of competences need to be fostered, whereas the challenges need to be addressed to avoid creating a White Elephant. The development of sustainability competences in HEI can lead to more sustainability literate decision-makers, leaders, scientists, and professionals, and thus, better address the pressing challenges that ail our societies and Earth.

Purpose

This study aims to analyse and evaluate the methodology followed by the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings (THE-IR), as well as the coverage obtained and the data offered by this ranking, to determine if its methodology reflects the degree of sustainability of universities, and whether their results are accurate enough to be used as a data source for research and strategic decision-making.

Design/methodology/approach

A summative content analysis of the THE-IR methodology was conducted, paying special attention to the macro-structure (university score) and micro-structure (sustainable development goals [SDG] score) levels of the research-related metrics. Then, the data published by THE-IR in the 2019, 2020 and 2021 edition was collected via web scraping. After that, all the data was statistically analysed to find out performance rates, SDGs’ success rates and geographic distributions. Finally, a pairwise comparison of the THE-IR against the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THE-WUR) was conducted to calculate overlap measures.

Findings

Severe inconsistencies in the THE-IR methodology have been found, offering a distorted view of sustainability in higher education institutions, allowing different strategic actions to participate in the ranking (interested, strategic, committed and outperformer universities). The observed growing number of universities from developing countries and the absence of world-class universities reflect an opportunity for less-esteemed institutions, which might have a chance to gain reputation based on their efforts towards sustainability, but from a flawed ranking which should be avoided for decision-making.

Practical implications

University managers can be aware of the THE-IR validity when demanding informed decisions. University ranking researchers and practitioners can access a detailed analysis of the THE-IR to determine its properties as a ranking and use raw data from THE-IR in other studies or reports. Policy makers can use the main findings of this work to avoid misinterpretations when developing public policies related to the evaluation of the contribution of universities to the SDGs. Otherwise, these results can help the ranking publisher to improve some of the inconsistencies found in this study.

Social implications

Given the global audience of the THE-IR, this work contributes to minimising the distorted vision that the THE-IR projects about sustainability in higher education institutions, and alerts governments, higher education bodies and policy makers to take precautions when making decisions based on this ranking.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this contribution is the first providing an analysis of the THE-IR’s methodology. The faults in the methodology, the coverage at the country-level and the overlap between THE-IR and THE-WUR have unveiled the existence of specific strategies in the participation of universities, of interest both for experts in university rankings and SDGs.

Research fronts (RFs) represent the most dynamic areas of science and technology and the topics that receive higher attention in a specific field. Their identification has become the focus of global scientific and technological competition. In this study, we performed an analysis of the In-Cites RFs from Web of Science (WoS) in seven Spanish universities as a case study in the period 2015–2019. Our purpose is threefold: (1) to develop a methodology for approximating the ‘alignment’ of scientific articles with the RFs, (2) to test if Highly Cited Papers (HCP) from these universities are more aligned with RFs than the rest of the output, and (3) to test if papers aligned with RFs receive more citations per document than those not aligned. The study uses a novel retrieval method, and the analysis is conducted using a coincidence method (comparison with a standard), in which Mann–Kendall’s test and Pearson’s correlation are used. The results show that there is alignment between output and the HCP and those better aligned, present greater mean ranks of citations per article. This study shows the usefulness of RFs for orienting the research priorities at the institutional level for the university.

Una de las primeras tareas para abordar cualquier trabajo académico es revisar las publicaciones llevadas a cabo sobre el tema. En este artículo se presenta una metodología que permite analizar las tendencias científicas en una disciplina a través de un análisis bibliométrico. En concreto, se examina su utilidad para estudiar los trabajos en el campo de la Geografía Económica; para ello se ha elegido como base de datos para su análisis la Web of Science (WoS). Con un conjunto de 4,307 publicaciones se analizan varios indicadores bibliométricos como la evolución de la producción científica, los agentes involucrados (países y organizaciones) y temas abordados, con el objetivo de ver la trayectoria del volumen de trabajos y las especializaciones temáticas de la Geografía Económica desde 1920 a la actualidad.

One of the first tasks to tackle any scientific publication is to review all the scientific literature on the subject. This article presents a methodology that allows analyzing scientific trends in a discipline through a bibliometric analysis. Specifically, the field of Economic Geography is used as a case study, Web of Science (WoS) has been chosen as the database for this analysis. With a set of 4,307 publications, various bibliometric indicators are analyzed, such as the evolution of scientific production, the agents involved (countries and organizations) and topics addressed, in order to see the evolution of the scientific output and the thematic specializations of Economic Geography from 1920 to the present.

Urban resilience is an emergent concept that is receiving an increasing attention. Its definition is linked with the ability of an urban system to resist, maintain continuity and recover through all stresses while adapting and transforming towards sustainability. The aim of this study is two-fold. First, we analyse the research output on urban resilience using bibliometric techniques and Web of Science (WoS) in order to define the scope and identify topics in the urban resilience literature. CiteSpace software is used to establish the intellectual framework. Second, their contribution to sustainability dimensions and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) based on the research output is explored.

For that purpose, we examined 1014 publications during the period 1998–2020. The findings reveal urban resilience literature has grown since the 2009.A specialization in recent years from more theoretical research to a more practical is identified. In terms of contribution towards sustainability, the findings show the number of publications that directly address sustainability is scarce and more balanced to environmental and social perspectives. These findings can provide a better understanding of the patterns and trends in the field and provides first evidence of the contribution of academic research on urban resilience to sustainability.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) have been undertaking considerable efforts to embed sustainability into their system; however, there have been limited studies on the incorporation of sustainability into research. In parallel, it has been found that women have an important role in contributing to sustainability since they are more engaged and have a more holistic perspective on sustainability than men. These two phenomena have resulted in limited studies about the contribution of women to sustainability research (i.e., in scientific publishing). A bibliometric analysis of more than 39,000 documents (with 147,090 authorships) was done to fill this gap, focusing on sustainability peer-review publications in Europe between 2015 and 2020. The results show that women's presence in sustainability research has been increasing during the last years; however, there are still few female authorship publications, even in fields that have been traditionally women-oriented. In addition, their publications have been less recognized by the scientific community. The results also show substantial gender differences in terms of author leadership, where female senior researchers are more likely to mentor female junior researchers than men. Female researchers tend to collaborate nationally, but they could improve their international collaboration since this can improve their research and impact. More support should be provided to female researchers to help foster women's sustainability engagement and holistic perspectives, reduce existing negative feedback loops, and increase positive ones. Achieving gender equality is sine qua non in achieving sustainable societies.