About this service

The aim of Find SDG Research is to allow anyone – those working in academia, public and private sectors, students, and the general public – to find Norwegian publications related to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and, when possible, access to the full text. It primarily covers literature that is related to the targets of the SDGs. Read more about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their targets under About the SDGs

You can use this service to find SDG-related research literature from Norwegian institutions. You can filter by SDG, and adjust the number of results you get by choosing a set to search in: You can look at a broader set of results by finding research related to the topics in the targets (using the "SDG" filter), or you can narrow down your search by searching only for research closely related to actions in the targets ("SDG, action"). Methods and coverage are described in more detail below. See here for help using the search.

Under Communication materials you can find texts, posters, flyers and more available for download.

Why did we set up this service?

Access to research which is relevant to the SDGs is important across society, for spreading knowledge, opening-up science, and achieving the goals. However, this research can be difficult to find, especially for those outside academia. Other services which map SDG related publications vary in whether they offer their services to the public, have good coverage of local or Norwegian-language publications, or provide sufficient explanation for their methods. Our service aims to be an easy entry point to research, including local and Norwegian-language publications, with well-documented methods that can be reused and modified.

Organisation

This service was established by the University of Bergen Library, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences Library, and University of Stavanger Library, in a 2-year project (opens in a new tab) with support from a grant from the National Library of Norway (see the project in the National Library Project Bank (Norwegian only) (opens in a new tab)). Representatives from the University of Bergen Library, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences Library, and University of Stavanger Library form the editorial committee for the service. Technical support for the platform is provided by the University of Bergen Library. Contact us here.

The search strings used to map SDG-related research are maintained by these institutions and additional collaborators. For more information about contributors to the mappings, see Search string documentation.

Methods and coverage

Coverage

We currently cover ten of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15). Additional SDGs can be added, depending on capacity. For a publication to be in our total dataset, it must a) be indexed in CRISTIN (opens in a new tab) (Current Research Information System in Norway), b) be written in English or Norwegian, and c) be categorised in CRISTIN as a book, part of a book/report, report/dissertation or journal publication, but not in the subcategories book review, errata, abstract or other. This covers a relatively large proportion of written scientific outputs in Norway. However, researchers do not always register outputs such as popular works or reports in CRISTIN, so coverage of these may vary. Finally, to be included in the service, a publication must be related to an SDG according to our SDG-mapping method.

We currently cover works published from 2015 to 2023, with partial coverage of 2024.

SDG-mapping methodology

The research publications in this service were mapped to SDGs using a method we have dubbed the “Bergen Approach”. It involves:

1. Interpreting what an SDG target is about. What are the themes? What is the action?
2. Defining what research should be considered “related”. Here we use two approaches – in the action approach, research mentioning the actions of the targets is considered relevant (e.g. “end hunger”) – this aims to find a small, core set of action-oriented research. In the broader approach (known as "topic" in the search strings), it is enough for research to mention the topics of the target to be considered relevant (e.g. “hunger”) – this is therefore a larger, broader set.
3. Creating Boolean search strings to find this research, including Norwegian translations.
4. Documenting these steps.

If you have access to Web of Science or can run Python, you are welcome to try out, reuse or modify our strings. The strings, together with more detailed documentation, are available under Search Strings.

The metadata provided in the service is from CRISTIN.