(16 Sep 2021) Cabells – a US-based information services company – in collaboration with the SDG Dashboard at Saint Joseph’s University – a leading Jesuit Catholic university in Philadelphia – is today launching the SDG Impact Intensity™ journal rating, a pilot study which aims to shift the perspective away from narrow interpretations of journal quality to a more dynamic appreciation of impact, and in particular a journal’s focus through its article outputs on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Cabells and Saint Joseph’s University have been working together for two years to develop a new journals metric designed to recognize the relevance of research outputs in terms of SDG Impact Intensity™. Using AI methodology from Saint Joseph’s and the curated Journalytics database of reputable journals from Cabells, the team has produced a pilot study that highlights the strength of sustainability journals when assessed through the prism of the SDGs.
Both Cabells and Saint Joseph’s are committed to supporting the UN SDGs and a progressive global research agenda. The aim of the SDG Impact Intensity™ collaboration is to support researchers, universities and funders in recognizing research publications focused on achieving a wider impact.
Following the success of the pilot, the next stage will see a full journal metric be produced in 2022. Cabells and Saint Joseph’s are joining a groundswell of positive action in progressing the SDG agenda, supporting other initiatives such as the Higher Education Sustainability Initiative (HESI), which is hosting a webinar next week on aligning scholarly activity with the SDGs.
Simon Linacre, Marketing Director at Cabells, said: “Cabells signed up to the UN Publishers Compact earlier in 2021 as part of our wider commitment to supporting and championing research that seeks to bring enable meaningful change, and I would encourage all publishers to do the same. Through our collaboration with the wonderful team at Saint Joseph’s University, we hope to help bring about a paradigm shift where a journal is not simply labelled as good quality due to the citations it receives or the lists it appears on, but because of the wider impact it identifies through the nature of its articles and their relevance to the SDGs.”
The rating can be accessed here.
