Viewing HKU Research Through the SDG Lens
— by Chloe Ng
Continuing from our previous blog posts1 in presenting HKU’s research contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), this year’s post tracks HKU research performance across the 16 SDGs2 during 2019-20243, and explore changes in individual SDGs and topics over time.
HKU Publications Contributing to Sustainable Development
Of the 48,284 scholarly outputs from HKU scholars between 2019 and 2024, 40% are identified with at least one of the 16 SDG search queries based on the Elsevier 2023 SDG Mapping. It demonstrates that a sizable proportion of HKU research contributes to sustainable development.
HKU scholars contribute the most outputs to SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being), accounting for 21.8% of all HKU outputs during the period, followed by SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy). The number of scholarly outputs of each SDG is illustrated in Figure 1.
Figure 1 – HKU Publications by SDG in 2019-2024
Citation Impact of HKU Publications
To understand the citation impact of HKU publications related to SDGs, the Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI)4 of these publications is compared to the FWCI of publications not identified by any of the 16 SDG search queries. Publications identified with at least one SDG have an FWCI of 2.49, outperforming other HKU publications in terms of citation impact on average.
| HKU Publications identified with the 16 SDGs | HKU Publications not identified with any SDGs | |
| Number of Publications | 19,297 | 28,987 |
| FWCI | 2.49 | 1.90 |
Table 1 – Citation Impact of HKU Publications related to SDGs
The scholarly outputs from HKU have an FWCI above 1.0 in all 16 SDGs searched, indicating that the publications generally receive more citations than expected based on the global average for similar publications. Research on SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) has the highest FWCI, at 4.85 times the average citations expected. Research on SDG 5 (Gender Equality) also demonstrates strong performance, with an FWCI of 3.05. These results are shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2 – Field-Weighted Citation Impact of HKU Publications related to SDGs in 2019-2024
Topic Clusters and Topics on SDGs
Through the lens of Topic Clusters and Topics5, we gain a better understanding of the hot topics among all and within each of the 16 SDGs. During the period of 2019-2024, noteworthy areas of interest include the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health, and urban heat island effect, as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3 – Topic Clusters and Topics of HKU Publications related to SDGs in 2019-20246
Trends in SDG publications
Changes in HKU’s contributions to various SDGs since 2019 are notable. While the number of publications associated with SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being) has always been the highest, peaking in 2022, those of some other SDGs, such as SDG 13 (Climate Action), have gained increasing momentum in recent years, as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4 – HKU Publications Related to SDGs by Publication Year
Changes in Topic Clusters and Topics help explain the SDG trends. While coronavirus-related topics remain prominent, the number of research outputs has dropped in the last two years. On the other hand, emerging topics like deep learning and transportation information systems are on the rise. Figure 5 shows the changes in Topic Clusters and Topics of SDGs-related publications over time.
Figure 5 – Topic Clusters and Topics of HKU Publications Related to SDGs by Publication Year 6
Limitations of mapping publications to SDGs with keyword-based bibliometric queries
While the SDG mapping with keyword-based bibliometric queries offers a tool to analyze an institution’s contribution to sustainable development, relying solely on Boolean search queries of SDG-related terms has certain drawbacks. Study shows that different interpretations of the SDGs and approaches to building search queries could return significantly different results with little overlap in publications retrieved (Armitage et al., 2020). Therefore, any analysis developed from bibliometric queries should be interpreted with caution.
Reference:
Armitage, C. S., Lorenz, M., & Mikki, S. (2020). Mapping scholarly publications related to the Sustainable Development Goals: Do independent bibliometric approaches get the same results? Quantitative Science Studies, 1(3), 1092–1108. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00071
Notes:
- Previous blog posts on the review HKU research on SDGs
- Elsevier does not include SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals) because it is difficult to quantify and be defined with a search query.
- The data in this blog post were extracted from SciVal on 16 January 2025.
- FWCI measures the ratio of the citations received by a publication and the citations expected based on the subject field’s average.
- A Topic is a dynamic collection of documents with a common focused intellectual interest, and a Topic Cluster represents a higher-level area of research by aggregating similar research interests though direct citation linking.
- The chart includes topic clusters with at least 50 HKU scholarly outputs in all SDGs only.
- The word cloud image of this post is created with the top keyphrases of HKU publications related to SDGs in 2019-2024.
