ABSTRACT
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.
ABSTRACT
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.
Subject(s)
Bibliometrics , Carbon Footprint , Humans , PublicationsABSTRACT
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.
