A recent post on The Scholarly Kitchen blog, How Can Scholarly Publishing Overcome Its ‘SDG Inertia’? raises some thought-provoking questions about the scholarly publishing industry’s efforts to support the SDGs and encourages publishers to take stock of their SDG progress.

As a signatory of the UN SDG Publishers Compact, we remain dedicated to championing research that tackles the world’s most pressing challenges and felt this was a good reminder to reflect and give an update on our commitment to the Goals.  

Research with Impact

Our most significant contribution to the SDGs is through the thoughtful commissioning of research that informs policy and inspires change. Since our last update, we have significantly expanded our dedicated book series:

• We are delighted to announce the launch of our new Elgar Series on Sustainable Development, affiliated with the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and working closely with series editors M. Kenneth Holt, Phoebe Koundouri, Guillaume Lafortune and Nikolaos Karagiannis.

Books in this comprehensive series seek to mobilize scientific, technical, and financial expertise from the over 2,000 institutions including universities, think tanks, businesses and governments of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). This dynamic global network is committed to research, education, policy innovation, and practical solutions for sustainable development.

• The Elgar Companions to the SDGs: We are particularly proud of this flagship series which now has 15 published books with several more forthcoming titles. Edited and written by leading researchers in their fields, these comprehensive Research Companions are a call to action, feature cutting-edge research and are written with a global readership in mind.

• The Progressing the Sustainable Development Goals series: Following the success of Interlinkages between the Sustainable Development Goals, this monograph series has grown to include essential new titles such as Pathways to Sustainable Development and Digital Innovation and Sustainability in Education.

As well as our focused commissioning on the Goals, a key pillar of our commitment to championing the SDGs is to carefully curate our relevant content and make it as visible and discoverable as possible. We offer three packages of eBooks to meet the budgets and needs of different sized libraries. Our comprehensive SDG Subject Specific Collection includes 739 scholarly monographs, research handbooks, and reference titles related to the themes of the 17 goals. We also offer a cost-effective Essentials in the UN Sustainable Development Goals package that includes our most used and best-selling titles. And for libraries looking to expand their reference collections, we offer a package of research handbooks, companions, and encyclopedias related to the Goals.

Sustainable Business Operations

Supporting the SDGs is not just about what we publish, but how we operate as a business. From our staff working groups on environmental stewardship and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) to the accessibility of our content, we take seriously our responsibility to the communities we work with directly as well as the impact we have on society more broadly.

As part of this commitment, we work in partnership with both the EIFL and Research4Life programs, giving free or very low-cost institutional and practitioner access to selected digital content in developing and transition economy countries.

We are also active participants in cross-industry initiatives and groups for example the IPG’s Sustainability Action Group and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Action Group, the Publishers Association’s Inclusion Pledge, Publishing Declares and the International Publishers Association SDG dashboard to learn from others in our industry and to contribute our experience to help foster wider change.

Looking Ahead

As the SK post points out, the stark reality is that with only four years to go, progress is far from where it needs to be to achieve the individual SDG targets. The role of high-quality law, business and social science research has never been more critical to inform policy and action, as well as to analyse and reflect on the SDGs to inform the post-2030 Agenda. Whether it is exploring the legal frameworks of the SDGs or the role of AI in sustainable development, we are committed to providing the platform for the ideas that will define our future.

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This article was written by Katy Crossan, Publisher at Edward Elgar Publishing.