Originally published in University World News, by Keith Nuthall – 03 August 2024
New advice for the global academic publishing sector has been released that aims to link academics with civil society, businesses and governments, so that innovations can be more widely understood and can contribute to the more effective delivery of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The SDGs were adopted by the UN’s General Assembly in 2017, but implementation of the targets has been tardy and patchy. That is why a key publishing committee of the UN Higher Education Sustainability Initiative (HESI) has developed tips for practical actions by publishers, editors, researchers and students to help turn the SDGs into reality.
The HESI SDG Publishers Compact Fellows (SDG Compact Fellows group), a union of publishers, researchers and data providers, wants to orientate academic publishing towards greater support for sustainable development goals.
The initiative is supported by the International Publishers Association, the European Association of Science Editors and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), among other groups.
Communicating useful information
Speaking to University World News, SDG Compact Fellows group founder and co-chair Dr Debra Rowe, also president of the US Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development, said:
“Just imagine a world where the practitioners, publishers, policymakers, researchers and educators are all talking to each other.
Dr Debra Rowe
“And they’re communicating in a way that we’re getting much more useful information to the people who need it, co-created by those who’ll be able to take advantage of it [and] who’ll be connected to those who are picking their research agenda in a much more useful way. Just imagine what that world could be like.”
Referencing the alarming statistics about the number of people who doubt science (November 2023 Pew Research Service data says that 27% of Americans have “not too much or no confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interests”), Rowe said: “This could also turn that around by making it more accessible to them.” […]
“We’re seeing these action tips happening already in multiple publishing companies, showing up as an emerging international trend,”
The launch of the revamped version of the HESI fellows’ advice for integrating its members’ work with society – advice that is more comprehensive and detailed than initial guidance released in 2019 – took place on 26 July 2024.
The compact’s work is already bearing fruit. […] The SDG Compact Fellows group hopes the revised guidance will intensify this change.
In a note, it says: “Research and education are at the core of all progress. It must now be aimed at achieving the SDGs by the 2030 deadline.”
The SDG Compact Fellows group calls on signatories of the SDG Publishers Compact to try to “align the entire research and education community’s daily practices, content and measures of success to the SDGs”. And its tips are “key practical actions that different groups within the scholarly community can take to embed SDGs into practice”.
Promoting equity
The advice is grouped into 12 sets of suggestions targeting the entire academic publishing and related communication and research sector, while also advising specific segments within this higher education area.
An introductory note by the SDG Compact Fellows group on the uneven spread worldwide of resources commanded by researchers and publishers stresses the need for them to collaborate to achieve the SDGs.
“Equity is a matter of fairness in relation to the just distribution of resources. It does not imply absolute equality, but it does imply equality of opportunity” it says.
As a result, researchers and publishers should confer, and share best practice and success stories. And sustainability research should be assessed for its impact, outcomes and real-world benefits,” says the note.
“Counting research publications and citations only tells part of the story of the true impact of research and is not an effective measure of quality,” it adds.
Publishing and research policies need to be framed to avoid under-representation in research output by “historically marginalised groups”. Managers are advised to watch for “gender and other forms of discrimination”.
Such goals can be furthered by ensuring editorial boards are equitable, culturally and geographically diverse, including recognising members may have more than one ethnicity and could be expatriates.
Editing should consider that writers may not be writing in their mother-tongue, taking “steps to promote fairness and improve accessibility”, including using automated editing processes as well as human editing expertise, it notes.
Researchers and funders should ensure that communities studied for research (for instance in health studies), should be treated as co-creators and active participants in knowledge generation. Their input should be acknowledged, including access to end results.
The aim here is to avoid “parachute research whereby powerful institutions ‘drop in and drop out’ without active engagement, participation and/or acknowledgement of work done by-with local communities”, says the SDG Compact Fellows group guidance.
Focused advice
As for more focused advice, tips for academic journal editors include embracing SDGs in editorial policy, with journal aims, scope and submission guidelines prioritising submissions that align with SDGs, “in particular, SDG-related research with a specific, actionable connection to challenges and opportunities in practice”.
It wants editors to insist that keywords correctly identify sustainable development and SDG-related themes impacted by an article. It also suggests that editors adopt author guidelines and that abstracts include SDG implications for practitioners and policymakers.
Advice for academic publishers includes the appointment of “practitioner editors” on editorial boards to provide practical perspectives and connections, helping journals connect to practitioner groups to learn what are urgent research questions related to SDGs, and helping select content suitable for translation and dissemination.
For graduate researchers and students, a special section suggests that they pick an SDG that relates to their personal projects and use the SDG to help find appropriate articles, authors and networking partners…”.
Also, it suggests interlinking research ideas to one SDG or more: “Find the intersection between your SDG and the others as you expand your research,” the advice notes.
When working with librarians, the advice suggests students ask librarians if a library’s database can be searched for books, articles or journals covering SDGs.
Advice for librarians is contained in a separate section which suggests they recruit and support campus and community members to create bespoke, curated collections related to SDGs.
It adds that library guides (LibGuides) that bring together resources on a particular topic can be focused on SDGs.
A key element of the guidance is that authors and editors use the compact’s comprehensive “SDG Rubric” to assess whether a textbook or related materials covers SDGs and does so accurately. This detailed assessment tool helps editors revise material “to identify areas that can be more inclusive of and better aligned with SDGs”.
It also aims to help authors writing about SDGs to avoid using inaccurate and outdated SDG references.
Public communication
There is also guidance for researchers and academic publishers on communicating with policymakers, journalists and the public on SDG issues, where pro-SDG higher education actors try to encourage these communications professionals “to help get the right message out and maintain trust in scientific research”.
A key point here is the inclusion of a plain language summary at the end of an abstract, with clear headings, summary bullet points, including these relating to specific SDGs, using clear and succinct writing understandable by non-specialists, with clarifications of policy-practical problems being addressed.
This can help to sharpen a paper’s effectiveness for sustainability professionals and practitioners, helping them to follow best practice, aiding decision-making, answering practical questions and helping professionals to reassess solutions.
Similar advice is given to academic writers communicating with professionals and practitioners, such as ensuring writers start work with a point that clearly states the issue being addressed, so “that key information comes first to catch the attention of busy readers”.
Findings need to be couched in real terms, it argues, such as “Medicine X works better if taken with food” or “Without restriction of air pollution levels to below Y, deaths from respiratory conditions in affected areas are X%” higher”.
Plain language messaging
Rowe said two of the top tips include key complementary ideas: submitting a plain language message to share with practitioner and policymaking organisations along with the article submission; and including these implications in abstracts.
Given the fact that abstracts are the only publicly available material in paid-for journals, Rowe said: “People don’t have access to the articles, and they may have to pay US$40 to US$50 a pop to read them.”
If the abstract does not spell out the paper’s implications for policymakers and practitioners, they will not buy the journal article to read. So, authors’ submission guidelines must require these practical messages, and reviewers’ guidelines should expect them too, she said.
The plain language summaries are needed because many practitioners and policymakers don’t have time to review the academic literature and read through all the abstracts to find essential implications, Rowe said.
“This is a relatively easy way to fix the dysfunctional gap between academic research and the policymakers and practitioners,”
A new section of the guidance adds that publishers can also help to ensure more practical wisdom is made available to a wider public by offering author fee waivers to researchers who may lack financing but have an innovative idea.
That could help them attract papers from practitioners and other experts not attached to a research-supporting academic institution, for example.
The co-creation of research with practitioners is also highlighted in a section “to ensure that real-world needs and challenges are addressed effectively”.
To achieve this, researchers should engage practitioners from a project’s inception, co-designing research questions, methodologies and desired outcomes, aligning research questions with practical needs and priorities, says the guidance.
Inclusion of grey literature
Rowe noted that so-called “grey literature”, from think tanks and municipal governments, for example, usually “doesn’t get into the academic journals and many academics don’t learn about it in general and so policymakers don’t either”.
In this context, co-creation is a “sweet spot”, ensuring such expertise “gets into both the practitioner publications and into the academics’ publications … getting both of them out of their silos”.
Another strategy to integrate grey literature into academic publications is via review articles, with academics encouraged to include grey literature and not just other academic articles: “You have to say it’s a valuable resource. It gets the researchers aware of what’s going on with the grey literature,” she said.
Rowe said higher education is well-placed to make a real difference in the face of urgent sustainable development challenges. “But we have to change some of our processes and fill in some of the gaps that exist,” said Rowe.
A failure to connect academic publishing with potential users of such research is one such “gaping hole” that can be tackled through better communication.
“It’s low-hanging fruit,” said Rowe.