A comparison of different methods of identifying publications related to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: Case Study of SDG 13: Climate Action

As sustainability becomes an increasing priority throughout global society, academic and research institutions are assessed on their contribution to relevant research publications. This study compares four methods of identifying research publications related to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 13: climate action. The four methods, Elsevier, STRINGS, SIRIS, and Dimensions have each developed search strings with the help of subject matter experts which are then enhanced through distinct methods to produce a final set of publications. Our analysis showed that the methods produced comparable quantities of publications but with little overlap between them. We visualised some difference in topic focus between the methods and drew links with the search strategies used. Differences between publications retrieved are likely to come from subjective interpretation of the goals, keyword selection, operationalising search strategies, AI enhancements, and selection of bibliographic database. Many of these are driven by human choices and the compound effect of the differences is likely to have resulted in non-overlapping publication sets. Each of the elements warrants deeper investigation to understand their role in identifying SDG-related research. Currently, it premature to rely on any one method to assess progress against the goal.