SDG Publishers Compact
Introduction
Aligning academic research and education with the SDGs is crucial for a sustainable future. HESI therefore tasked a multi-stakeholder working group of sustainability experts/practitioners/academic leaders with creating advice that would guide these alignments.
The SDG Publishers Compact, launched by the International Publishers Association and the United Nations back in 2020, has continued to gather momentum for the wider publishing sector and is a focus area to amplify. In practice, the Compact requires aligning daily practices, content, and measures of success with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). One sector accelerating progress has been academic publishing. Academic publishers joined with over 150 organisations, including academic publishing industry associations such as STM and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers.
In support of the Compact, HESI facilitated a SDG Publishers Compact Fellows program. These Fellows, from publishing and academia, are working on 4 key initiatives;
- Integration of SDG Educational Materials: The Academic Societies and Textbooks group is developing ways for publishers to better recognize and address the lack of SDG-related content in their educational materials. This includes presentation materials for conferences and other relevant stakeholder meetings to build awareness around the SDGs. Furthermore, the Fellows are addressing the complex question of what will make an educational resource an SDG resource. The expected outcome is that instructors, traditional-aged students, and lifelong learners will feel inspired and empowered with quality knowledge and resources around the SDGs so they will be motivated to act with confidence, knowing how to contribute to a sustainable future.
- Putting the SDGs into practice: The Connecting Academic Researchers and Practitioners group is focused on developing best practices that will foster communication and build stronger relationships between academic research and those who use research - the practitioners (such as Businesses). The group is working on encouraging authors, editors, and publishers to create synopsized content and alternate formats that are useful and appealing to practitioners. They are also creating the “Top Actions” tips to encourage the integration of SDGs into daily practice and to stimulate research based on the challenges and opportunities practitioners face.
- Redefining impact: The Impact and Reach group is focused on changing the traditional ways research impact is measured and viewed, specifically looking at academic rankings and incentives. Multiple “Top Actions” tips for publishers, editors, authors, librarians and graduate students are being completed.The group is preparing a resource to highlight seminal SDG research articles and their impact on policy, education, society and beyond. In addition, to ease the identification, collection, and labelling of SDG-aligned content (that can help with rankings), the group is considering the development of a standardised SDG taxonomy to be used by researchers, publishers and policymakers alike.
- Changing the culture in Higher Education: A final, broad-focused sub-group on Changing Culture is taking steps to affect culture change throughout the academic and publishing ecosystem. This group is evaluating the various stakeholders and what their needs are to move the focus toward the SDGs. While the initial focus will be on connecting with and elevating those already working with SDGs, eventually the group will transition to highlighting additional associations (e.g. journal editors), companies (e.g. publishers) and institutions (e.g. educators and researchers) and the spaces where they could immediately incorporate the SDGs.
HESI is supporting the STM SDG Academic Publishers Forum
The STM Association supports over 140 publishers from 20 countries in their mission to advance trusted research worldwide. STM signed up to the SDG Publishers Compact earlier this year and will convene a new SDG Publishers Forum in the new year. The idea is to create a place to gather like minded publishers to discuss and take action on industry wide SDG related initiatives. It provides the ideal place to discuss the output, best practises and top 10 tips from the HESI group and others as the wider sector steps up to the challenges and opportunities that the SDGs present for research and education.
Partnerships for the goals
The 17 SDGs are broad and ambitious. Each goal is interlinked, requiring progress to be made across several goals at the same time. It is why the last goal, SDG 17, is dedicated towards partnerships. The academic sector has recognized that partnerships, projects and initiatives from all parts of academia are needed. The HESI SDG fellows, members of the STM SDG forum and academic publishers signed up to the Compact provide a great blueprint of how working together can create this important movement that is redefining research and education with SDGs in mind.
If you are an academic publisher and would like to get involved, please sign up to the SDG Publishers Compact and start taking action.