Open access books: Making SDG research impactful

Author: Christina M. Brian

Vice President, Books

To support the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), research is needed on the root causes of the challenges, interventions to address them, and measuring progress. Partnering with a publisher that is committed to sustainability and dedicated to amplifying SDG research will boost your work’s real-world impact. Read on to find out more, including firsthand accounts from authors and editors who published their SDG research as an OA book with Springer Nature.

At Springer Nature we are committed to sustainability both in our business strategy and in the content we publish. Having worked in various editorial roles over the past two decades, books are particularly close to my heart, and it is exciting to see how they have evolved over the years. What role then do books play in our commitment to the SDGs?

The SDGs: A global framework for sustainability 

Established by the United Nations in 2015, the SDGs are a set of 17 interconnected and interdependent objectives that address the most pressing challenges of our time, specifying targets and indicators for their achievement by 2030. Each of the Goals focuses on different aspects relating to sustainable development, spanning social, economic, and environmental dimensions, from poverty and hunger, though health, education, and gender equality, to clean water, affordable energy, and peace.

2023 marked the halfway point to the 2030 deadline for achieving the SDGs . Unfortunately, the world is not nearly on track to meeting the targets of the SDGs by 2030. But this does not mean that we should halt our efforts to advance and promote the SDGs. If anything, we should double our engagement!

Asserting our commitment to supporting the SDGs 

Springer Nature continues to support the SDGs as a framework that fosters collaboration and enables alignment of efforts by governments, organisations, researchers, and communities across the globe.

Our greatest contribution to supporting the SDGs is the research we publish. Research structures our understanding of the SDGs; it establishes the measurements to evaluate them; it informs policies and practices that address them. Since 2015, Springer Nature’s SDG content has been cited more than 13 million times, and in 2023 alone, SDG articles were downloaded around 123 million times. We continuously develop diverse publication routes for SDG research (in journals, books, and collections), which is showcased in our SDG Programme. 

Tina Purnat, PhD, co-editor of the 2023 OA book Managing Infodemics in the 21st Century, asserts the importance of publishing on the SDGs despite massive disruptions to progress: “It is very important to promote publications that reflect on what has worked and what hasn't in the SDG agenda implementation so that the policies and actions can still be adapted and that we have the best evidence and strategies possible to discuss and look beyond 2030.”

Open access for maximum visibility 

What’s better than publishing on the SDGs? Publishing OA on the SDGs!

I believe that books are a medium made for the SDGs. They contribute to effectively addressing the SDGs, and even more so if they are published OA.

Publishing OA removes barriers to knowledge transfer and promotes equity in the dissemination of information. It creates a more inclusive and sustainable research environment where research outputs are easily available to all.

OA books have 2.4 times more citations, 10 times more downloads, and 10 times more online mentions than non-OA books on average. Importantly, we have found that our OA books also have a more geographically diverse readership, reaching on average 61% more countries than non-OA books, most of which are underrepresented in global scholarship.

Reproduced from the infographic summary of the White Paper Diversifying Readership Through Open Access: A Usage Analysis for OA Books.

Wider reach and impact are particularly important for SDG research because accessibility is key to fostering and sustaining global collaboration and discourse. That’s why publishing OA is central to our commitment to the SDGs.

Patricia Solis, PhD is co-editor of the multi-disciplinary book Open Mapping towards Sustainable Development Goals. She has seen firsthand how OA enables access for those who otherwise wouldn’t have it: “Some of my 62 co-authors of the edited book would not even have been able to afford purchasing their own contributions were it not for open access. And with more than a quarter million downloads in less than 18 months, it is very validating to know that the world is listening.”

Books: Creating impact on sustainable development  

I believe that books are a medium made for the SDGs. They contribute to effectively addressing the SDGs, and even more so if they are published OA. Wentao Huang, PhD is co-author of Energy Management of Integrated Energy System in Large Ports Ports, and winner of the Springer Nature 2024 China New Development Award for SDG7, and confirms that “OA enables our work to be read and discussed more widely by peers, and our academic influence can be established very quickly. OA also increases the communication between academic and industry.”

Books enable the in-depth investigations required to understand the intricacy and interconnectedness of complex issues. Their scope allows bringing together theoretical frameworks with extensive research and case study analyses and weaving them into a cohesive resource.

Books can become authoritative resources for researchers, practitioners, policy makers, educators, and anyone who is working towards sustainable development. They inform strategies and shape interventions towards the SDG targets.

Margherita Paola Poto, co-editor of the 2024 OA book Building Bridges for Effective Environmental Participation: The Path of Law Co-Creation, shares her views on the impact and benefits of publishing OA: “We work with partners and indigenous communities that did not have full access to resources and databases. Publishing open access has opened opportunities for the contributors and other interested parties to be included in the responses to sustainability challenges.”

Publishing across the SDGs: Comprehensive and interdisciplinary

Each of the SDGs has technical and material as well as social, cultural, and ethical dimensions. That’s why we at Springer Nature publish SDG research across the full disciplinary range of STM (science, technology, and medicine) and HSS (humanities and social sciences).

We have both the possibility and the responsibility to publish on sustainability across – and between – all disciplines, covering the multifaceted nature of sustainable development. Solving problems like climate change, hunger, inequality, and injustice requires a good mix of STM and HSS.

Springer Nature’s Sustainable Development Goals Series is indexed in Scopus and brings together the strengths of our imprints with different disciplinary emphases. The series’ publishing editors, Rachael Ballard of Palgrave Macmillan and Zach Romano of Springer, note that developing a cross-imprint series addresses the SDGs more effectively “by bridging the gap between the natural and social sciences. With increased discoverability, there is the added benefit of exposing academics and practitioners to content they might not have encountered if they remained in their disciplinary silos. The complementary focus of the imprints ensures comprehensive coverage across the 17 SDGs.”

At Springer Nature, we want to provide a home for impactful SDG-related knowledge. And when it is an OA book, research can be discovered, shared, used, and reused, and it can make a positive difference for people and the planet.

Learn more about publishing your SDG research as an open access book with Springer Nature for maximum impact.