Carnegie Mellon University

The Sustainable Development Goals in Research

Research will fuel our impact on the Global Goals. 

Working in collaboration with the CMU Libraries, the Sustainability Initiative brings together contributors from across the campus and beyond to engage in interdisciplinary research that will tackle the challenges that threaten sustainability. 

We have curated sample profiles and developed comprehensive tools through Elements, which highlights and showcases the academic and research activities across CMU. 

To make change, we must empower everyone—students, faculty, staff and external collaborators—with a comprehensive understanding of sustainability and how we can all contribute to positive change.

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Open-Source SDG Tools

We created a set of open-source tools for data analysis using the SDGs. This R package offers publicly available SDG keyword datasets, the official United Nations SDG color scheme and SDG descriptions, and several functions related to the mapping of text to particular sets of keywords. We encourage you to use these tools for your own education and research endeavors. We also welcome your suggestions for refinement.

Access the Open-Source Tools

Elements Support Guide and Portal

Elements is the shared research information management system at CMU, which collects and maintains academic and research activities in one convenient location. Administered by the University Libraries, Elements empowers CMU scholars to showcase their academic achievements and activities by collecting and curating their research and academic information, including mapping research to the SDGs.

To access existing CMU Libraries resources on mapping research to the SDGs, please visit the Elements Support Guide and Portal.

Additionally, CMU users can access the following two databases that contain research records with SDGs.

Scopus and SciVal

Scopus is an academic database covering peer-reviewed journals, book series, and conference proceedings and includes scientific, medical, technical and social science topics, with emphasis on citation analysis. Scival feature requires registration, but is free to CMU affiliates.

SciVal uses the data of the Scopus database to allow researchers, labs or departments to quickly explore the impact of their work. You must register to use SciVal. When off-campus, connect to full VPN access.

Dimensions

Dimensions is one of the largest linked research knowledge databases bringing together information on publications, grants, patents, clinical trials, policy documents and datasets into a single place for improved global discovery and analysis. Create an account using your CMU email address to gain full access to ‘Dimensions Plus.’ Dimensions Plus allows access to the Analytical Views feature and allows for saved searching, as well as other features.

Dimensions is one of the several products we license from Digital Science, and is connected through our scholarly communication ecosystem to KiltHub (figshare), Altmetric Explorer, and Elements.