Evolution and structure of "Sustainable development"

Abstract

Sustainable development is an interdisciplinary subject that has developed dramatically over the last few decades. Bibliometrics offers quantitative analytical techniques with which to study the development and growth of research in this area. The information used for the present study was retrieved from the SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, and A&HCI (Thomson Reuters) databases. The search was made on the topic "Sustainable development", limited to Document Types (Article) and Time Span (1900-2013). The result was a total of 13 093 articles retrieved. During the last 10 years, the annual (exponential) growth rate has been 12%, corresponding to a 6-year doubling time. The productivity of the authors varied widely. The 23 290 occurrences of the articles were distributed among 218 Web of Science categories. "Environmental Sciences" was the top-ranked category, with 3427 occurrences (by itself accounting for more than 26% of the total, and presenting the greatest diversity), followed by "Environmental Studies" (2417), "Ecology" (1046), and "Economics" (933). The methodological approach taken in the present work could be used to describe the structure of any other scientific field and its relationships with other disciplines, and to visualize the relationship between the different WoS categories conforming the subject under study.

Unveiling the Research Landscape of Sustainable Development Goals and Their Inclusion in Higher Education Institutions and Research Centers: Major Trends in 2000–2017

“…Scientometric studies offer a powerful tool to generate global pictures of the research activities in a given area. There are different scientometric studies that previously analyzed sustainability, sustainable development or sustainability science based on a keyword search (Nučič, 2012;Schoolman et al, 2012;Hassan et al, 2014;Kajikawa et al, 2014;Pulgarin et al, 2015;Ramírez Ríos et al, 2016;Olawumi and Chan, 2018). Some studies focused on analyzing the output of sustainability in higher education (Bizerril et al, 2018;Veiga Ávila et al, 2018;Alejandro-Cruz et al, 2019;Hallinger and Chatpinyakoop, 2019).…”

“…There have also been previous publications discussing the growth of the scientific production related with sustainability. For example, Pulgarin et al (2015) argued that the growth of research production in sustainability can be explained by "the impact of human activity on the environment" which "is leading to this area of research [sustainability] being studied from ever more different fields." Olawumi and Chan (2018) consider that this increase could be also linked to "more efforts and resources" being devoted to this topic.…”

New Imperative of Corporate Value Creation in Face of the Challenges of Sustainable Development

“…In these theories, the way in which the problem of development is perceived has changed, taking into consideration the areas being of a non-economic character (especially social issues). Pulgarín, Eklund, Garrote, & Escalona-Fernández, 2015;Bettencourt & Kaur, 2011;Cairns & Martinet, 2014;Dahl, 2012). Instead, they try to present the essence of sustainable development in the context of the issues connected with creating values in organisations, showing the mechanisms of changes at the same time and presenting their own proposals connected with the discussed topics.…”

The meaning-making of social impact in the academic and practitioners discourses

“…Thus, although major references on sustainability(Hassan, Haddawy, & Zhu, 2014;Wichaisri & Sopadang, 2018) does not seem pivotal to this body of literature on social impact, there is a clear link between social impact research and the sustainable development field. Other studies have also observed a rapid growth in the number of sustainable development studies towards the end of '90s(Pulgarín, Eklund, Garrote, & Escalona-Fernández, 2015;Zhu & Hua, 2017). Further on, the most productive journals on the theme social impact declare their interdisciplinary nature and their integrative interest in themes such as environment, society, health, urban planning, among others.…”