Highly Cited Researchers and Sustainable Development Goals
Explore our interactive dashboard to understand how the world’s most influential research aligns to global societal challenges.
The world is less than four years away from meeting the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in the United Nations 2030 Agenda — making this a critical moment to assess progress. Scientific research and R&D play a central role in advancing these goals, and are an integral part of SDGs themselves, referenced several times in the 2030 Agenda.
Each year, our Highly Cited Researchers program identifies scientists and social scientists worldwide who demonstrate significant and broad influence in their fields of research. This new interactive dashboard from the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) explores how the research outputs of Highly Cited Researchers align with SDGs, highlighting areas where globally influential research intersects with major societal challenges.
This analysis is based on Highly Cited Papers published between 2014 and 2024 and authored by Highly Cited Researchers selected in 2025. This research is attributed to SDGs, using the Clarivate SDG classification schema.
How does high-impact research relate to Sustainable Development Goals?
- 75.6% of all Highly Cited Papers, produced by Highly Cited Researchers, address global challenges outlined in SDGs.
- On average, each Highly Cited Researcher addresses 2-3 SDGs in their Highly Cited Papers.
- The SDGs most frequently aligned with Highly Cited Papers are Good Health and Well-being (SDG 3), followed by Affordable and Clean Energy (SDG 7) and Climate Action (SDG 13), all addressed in more than 10,000 Highly Cited Papers.
- Some fundamental research fields have strong associations with specific SDGs: Highly Cited Papers in Mathematics are strongly oriented towards challenges related to Good Health and Well-being (SDG 3), Physics focuses predominantly on Affordable and Clean Energy challenges (SDG 7), while Computer Science research addresses the needs of Sustainable Cities and Communities (SDG 11) and, again, Good Health and Well-being (SDG 3).
Explore how Highly Cited Papers align with SDGs
United Nations SDGs and the number of 2014-2024 Highly Cited Papers associated with them
Hover over each United Nations SDGs to see the number of 2014-2024 Highly Cited Papers associated with them.
No Poverty
244 papers associated with No Poverty
Zero hunger
4,783 papers associated with Zero Hunger
Good health and well-being
53,748 papers associated with Good Health and Well-being
Quality education
258 papers associated with Quality Education
Gender equality
1,283 papers associated with Gender Equality
Clean water and sanitation
4,614 papers associated with Clean Water and Sanitation
Affordable and clean energy
17,846 papers associated with Affordable and Clean Energy
Decent work and economic growth
1,088 papers associated with Decent Work and Economic Growth
Industry, innovation and infrastructure
2,018 papers associated with Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
Reduced inequalities
259 papers associated with Reduced Inequality
Sustainable cities and communities
7,068 papers associated with Sustainable Cities and Communities
Responsible consumption and production
2,989 papers associated with Responsible Consumption and Production
Climate action
13,159 papers associated with Climate Action
Life below water
6,321 papers associated with Life Below Water
Life on land
6,658 papers associated with Life on Land
Peace, justice, and strong institutions
36 papers associated with Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
Partnerships for the goals
85 papers associated with Partnerships for the Goals
Distribution of Highly Cited Papers by SDG, overall and per Highly Cited Researcher category
Distribution of Highly Cited Papers by SDG, per country/region
Methodology notes
- This analysis includes only Highly Cited Papers that passed paper-level evaluation (step 2 in the Highly Cited Researchers methodology).
- For the country/region analysis, we use the most recent primary affiliations of selected researchers, as identified in the Highly Cited Researchers 2025 list.
- Clarivate combines automated approaches with expert review to map publications to the SDGs. Papers are first mapped to Citation Topics, clusters of related documents linked through citations, and these Citation Topics are then assigned to one or more of the 17 SDGs. The Citation Topics categorization schema was developed through a partnership with the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University (CWTS) and Clarivate’s Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). ISI experts designed the schema for associating document-level clusters – the micro-level Citation Topics – to SDGs as an integral component of the new Clarivate Societal Impact Framework.
- As Highly Cited Papers of Highly Cited Researchers represent a relatively small subset of papers (around 55,000 out of tens of millions published in the same time window) and are biased towards science categories, some ‘social science’ SDGs – such as Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions (SDG 16) – may be underrepresented in this analysis. This requires careful interpretation at the country/region level (Figure 3), as small differences in underlying values can lead to large differences in percentile scores.
- Not all research aligns directly with SDGs, nor should it. To address societal challenges, fundamental, blue-sky research is also necessary, which may not be associated with specific societal goals for many years. Thus 100% alignment of SDGs to world leading research is not a desirable goal. Many breakthroughs and applications have emerged from such work after many years.
Author biography
Ryan Fry
Ryan leverages our Web of Science™ data and suite of products to study the scholarly research landscape. He analyzes trends in emerging topics such as Sustainable Development Goals, Open Access journals and the list of Highly Cited Researchers™. He’s worked since 2013 in various positions around Clarivate before finding his home at the ISI managing the production of the yearly Highly Cited Researchers list.
