Unveiling the path towards sustainability: scientific interest at HEIs from a scientometric approach in the period 2008-2017

Mención Internacional en el título de doctorLa humanidad ha experimentado el impacto de un modelo económico insostenible a todos los niveles. Este tema se ha cristalizado en diferentes cumbres y conferencias durante el siglo XX. Como resultado de esta preocupación, surgió el concepto de Desarrollo Sostenible (DS). Sin embargo, este concepto ha recibido muchas críticas por ser altamente antropocéntrico y compartimentado, carente de coherencia conceptual o interconexión entre todos los aspectos involucrados. Más tarde, la aparición de los Objetivos de Desarrollo del Milenio (ODM) en 2000 y los recientes Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible (ODS) en 2015 constituyen una nueva era. Este es el plan para lograr un futuro mejor y más sostenible para todos, en el que todos los agentes involucrados deben participar. En este punto, las instituciones de educación superior (IES) tienen un papel central y la sostenibilidad se ha convertido en una prioridad política para la ciencia. El objetivo de este estudio es conocer los patrones de la investigación llevada a cabo en investigación de sostenibilidad, incluido el flujo de actividad científica, así como la colaboración o el impacto que genera dicha investigación. Este estudio de doctorado explora cómo se puede delinear este concepto desde un enfoque bibliométrico, lo cual conduce a la ‘ciencia de la sostenibilidad’. La producción científica de artículos fue identificada y analizada en el período 2008-2017 en la Web of Science (WoS). Además, este estudio explora las instituciones de educación superior (IES) y su papel en el fomento de la sostenibilidad, mediante la evaluación de su investigación y la implementación de prácticas de sostenibilidad en las IES españolas. Además, presenta una delineación de los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible (ODS) y propone una metodología para clasificar la producción científica en cada uno e los objetivos. El análisis de esta producción se realiza a través de indicadores bibliométricos unidimensionales y multidimensionales. Estos indicadores se han dividido y analizado en diferentes niveles de agregación, desde el más general hasta el más específico, comenzando con las características generales de investigación y descendiendo al nivel de país, instituciones o temática, entre otros. Los resultados muestran un interés creciente en la investigación de sostenibilidad y se observa una fuerte influencia del pilar medioambiental. Además, hay países con una alta producción científica pero no tan especializados en el tema como otros con una menor producción. En cuanto a las instituciones, los resultados obtenidos muestran que las IES realizaron un importante esfuerzo de investigación para el desarrollo sostenible y son las que producen un mayor número de documentos. Además, se observa que las instituciones tienden a colaborar con centros geográficamente próximos. Al analizar las Prácticas de sostenibilidad en las IES españolas, se encuentran asociaciones altas entre variables como la presencia de un Plan de Sostenibilidad y de una Oficina Verde. Sin embargo, este estudio demuestra claramente que, aunque se reconoce que el desarrollo sostenible es muy importante para las IES y la sociedad, todavía no está integrado en las estrategias, actividades y políticas de todo el sistema. Como conclusión, se afirma que es esencial identificar estrategias de sostenibilidad e introducir desarrollo sostenible en todas las actividades en el entorno de las IES. Finalmente, esta tesis contribuye a la literatura sobre instituciones de educación superior sostenibles, así como al análisis y la mejora de educación superior para el desarrollo sostenible, especialmente en el sistema de educación superior español. Además, este estudio contribuye al análisis bibliométrico al ofrecer dos propuestas de delineación científica para la ciencia de la sostenibilidad y los objetivos de desarrollo sostenible, así como metodologías para clasificar la producción científica. Este análisis denota la importancia de los estudios bibliométricos para el estudio y la caracterización de la producción científica en un campo transdisciplinario que, además, se puede extrapolar a otros campos de estudio.Humanity has experienced the impact of an unsustainable economic model at all levels. This topic has crystallized in different summits and conferences during the 20th century. As a result of this concern, the concept of sustainable development (SD) emerged. However, it has received much criticism for being highly anthropocentric and compartmentalized, and lacking conceptual coherence or interconnectedness among all the aspects involved. The introduction of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000 and the recent Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 heralded a new era. They represent a blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all, in which all stakeholders need to be involved. At this point, higher education institutions (HEIs) have a central role to play and sustainability has emerged as a policy priority for science. The objective of this study is to investigate the patterns of sustainability research, including the flow of scientific activity, as well as the collaboration or impact that such research generates. This doctoral study explores how can sustainability can be delineated from a bibliometric approach, leading to a new approach of “sustainability science”. The scientific production of articles was identified and analysed for the period 2008–2017 using the Web of Science (WoS). Moreover, this research study explores HEIs and their role in fostering sustainability, by assessing their research and the implementation of sustainability practices in Spanish HEIs. As well, it presents a delineation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and proposes a methodology for classifying the output on each SDG. This analysis is done through unidimensional and multidimensional bibliometric indicators. These indicators have been divided and analysed in different levels of aggregation, from the most general to the most specific, starting with general research features and progressing to country, institutional, and thematic levels, among others. The results indicate a growing interest in sustainability research and a strong influence on the environmental pillar. Moreover, some countries with the highest scientific output are not as specialized in terms of topics as others with a lower output. Regarding institutions, the results obtained indicate that HEIs made an important research contribution to SD and are the ones that produce a higher number of documents. It was found that institutions tend to collaborate with other institutions that are close. By analysing sustainability practices in Spanish HEIs, it was found that there are more associations between variables such as having a sustainability plan and having a green office. However, this study clearly demonstrates that although SD is recognized as being very important to HEIs and society, it is not yet embedded in the whole system’s strategies, activities, and policies. In conclusion, this research study reveals that it is essential to identify sustainability strategies and introduce SD in all activities in the HEI environment. Finally, this thesis contributes to the literature on sustainable HEIs, as well as to how higher education for SD is understood and can be improved, especially in the Spanish higher education system. Moreover, this contributes to bibliometric study by offering two delineation approach to sustainability science and sustainable development goals as well as methodologies for classifying scientific output. This denotes the importante of bibliometric studies for the study and characterization of scientific output in a transdisciplinary field that can be extrapolated to other fields of study.Programa de Doctorado en Documentación: Archivos y Bibliotecas en el Entorno Digital por la Universidad Carlos III de MadridPresidente: Carlos Balaguer Bernaldo de Quirós.- Secretario: Birger Larsen.- Vocal: Sandra Sofía Ferreira Da Silva C

Measuring web connectivity between research organizations through ROR identifiers

Digital information needs to be accessed and used in a manageable and sustainable manner to facilitate the advancement of science and science management. Many types of Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) are already in use and well-established in support of the scholarly communication industry, mainly digital objects (e.g., DOIs) and person identifiers (e.g., ORCID). PIDs improve the interoperability of digital entities, make them reusable, and, at the same time, foster FAIR principles. The main objective of this exploratory work is to measure the degree and type of use of ROR identifiers by the online scientific and academic ecosystem through link-based indicators. The analysis yielded 149,851 links to ror.org webpages: 147,154 links to ROR-based URLs and 2,698 links to other informative webpages under the ror.org website. The results obtained evidence that the percentage of ROR identifiers linked is limited (51.6% of ROR identifiers have been linked at least once). These links come from a limited number of referring domains (242 unique domain names) and mainly from bibliographic records (51.4% of links) and organization cards (36% of links). While the distribution of ROR identifiers is biased towards Anglo-Saxon countries (mainly United States) and types (companies), the educational research organizations are the institutions most linked through their corresponding ROR-based URLs. The connectivity between DOIs, ORCIDs and RORs can be the spearhead to carry out new webometric and bibliometric studies, of interest to characterize the presence, impact, and interconnection of the global academic Web.Comment: Conference paper; 13 pages; 5 tables; 4 figure

Role taxonomy of green and sustainable science and technology journals: exportation, importation, specialization and interdisciplinarity

Sustainability science is, per se, a topic that is inherently interdisciplinarity and oriented towards the resolution of societal problems. In this paper, we propose a classification of scientific journals that composes the journal category Green and Sustainable Science and Technology in the period 2014-2018 through the entropy-based disciplinarity indicator (EBDI). This indicator allows the classification of scientific journals in four types based on the citing and cited dimensions: knowledge importer, knowledge exporter, disciplinary and interdisciplinarity. Moreover, the relationship between this taxonomy and the JCR bibliometric indicators and its predictive capacity of the taxonomy is explored through a CHAID tree. As well, relations between the Web of Science categories, journals and taxonomy are explored by the co-occurrence of categories and correspondence analysis. Results suggest that the great majority of journals in this field are specialized or interdisciplinary. However, over the 5-year period proposed in this study, interdisciplinary journals tend to be far more stable than specialized ones. The decision tree has shown that the number of citations is the variable with the greatest discriminating capacity.Open access funding provided by University of Gävle

Tracking Openness and Topic Evolution of COVID-19 Publications January 2020-March 2021: Comprehensive Bibliometric and Topic Modeling Analysis

Background: The COVID-19 outbreak highlighted the importance of rapid access to research. Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate research communication related to COVID-19, the level of openness of papers, and the main topics of research into this disease. Methods: Open access (OA) uptake (typologies, license use) and the topic evolution of publications were analyzed from the start of the pandemic (January 1, 2020) until the end of a year of widespread lockdown (March 1, 2021). Results: The sample included 95,605 publications; 94.1% were published in an OA form, 44% of which were published as Bronze OA. Among these OA publications, 42% do not have a license, which can limit the number of citations and thus the impact. Using a topic modeling approach, we found that articles in Hybrid and Green OA publications are more focused on patients and their effects, whereas the strategy to combat the pandemic adopted by different countries was the main topic of articles selecting publication via the Gold OA route. Conclusions: Although OA scientific production has increased, some weaknesses in OA practice, such as lack of licensing or under-researched topics, still hold back its effective use for further research

OSDG 2.0: a multilingual tool for classifying text data by UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Despite concrete indicators and targets, monitoring the progress of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) remains a challenge, given the many different actors, initiatives, and institutions involved. OSDG, an open-source classification tool aims to help navigate the SDG related ambiguities through a simple and easy to use application. The tool allows to map and connect activities to the SDGs by identifying SDG -relevant content in any text. This paper presents OSDG 2.0, a new iteration of the partnership's work, which marks a significant improvement in the tool's methodology, as well as support for content in 15 languages