Understanding Recent Trends in Global Sustainable Development Goal 6 Research: Scientometric, Text Mining and an Improved Framework for Future Research

Abstract

The fulfilment of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, concerning water and sanitation, is critical in itself and also conditional for the other 16 SDGs being met. The purpose of this study was to understand the scientific research trajectories, spatiotemporal development, scientific collaboration, ongoing research themes, and gaps related to SDG 6. We propose a coupling of bibliometric and text mining methods in this work, to statistically portray the impact of water research on the accomplishment of SDG 6. Through the Web of Science database, we focused on a single UN SDG goal (i.e., six related publications that were current (2015–2021)). The study was performed on the chosen 289 publications. With the analysis of Keywords Plus, abstracts, titles, as well as author keywords, we looked at the performance of authors, publications, journals, institutions, and nations in terms of publishing. To obtain an insight into the water and sanitation study topic, we used co-citation, co-occurrence, cooperation networks, theme networks and cluster analysis, word dynamics, thematic evolution, and other techniques. We filtered out five distinguishing themes using text mining and showed their temporal trends. The main outcome is that participation, as well as collaboration with countries of the Global South, is still lacking in the SDG 6 research sphere. Therefore, as an insight from this study, we proposed a conceptual framework, the sustainable development of water and sanitation (SDWS) framework, to classify the research domain of water and sanitation regarding its connections to the environment, economy, and society (i.e., sustainable development). The scientometric and text analysis results provide the contemporary state and overview of the water and sanitation research field, whereas the second, conceptual framework section, provides a better understanding of qualitative contents, by revealing the insights gained, as well as the important work to be done in future water and sanitation studies.

Text Mining Analysis of ESG Management Reports in South Korea: Comparison With Sustainable Development Goals

“…Research themes and gaps, specifically in SDG 6, have been identified using cooperation networks, theme networks, and cluster analysis. There now exists a conceptual framework of SDG 6 and a classification of the relationships between the environment, economy, and society (Roy et al, 2022).…”

“…Research themes and gaps, specifically in SDG 6, have been identified using cooperation networks, theme networks, and cluster analysis. There now exists a conceptual framework of SDG 6 and a classification of the relationships between the environment, economy, and society (Roy et al, 2022). Polychronopoulos et al (2021) used latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling analysis to obtain insights into entrepreneurs' engagement in SDGs.…”

An analysis of annual reports from the sustainable development goals perspective

“…Jang (2021) reviewed the academic papers which are published by Springer to specify policy issues related to the education gap using text mining approach. Roy et al (2022) presented the recent trends in SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation) for six years. They used bibliometric analysis based on text mining to support SDG 6.…”

Strategic Implementation of Integrated Water Resource Management in Selected Areas of Palawan: SWOT-AHP Method

“…This study focuses on Sustainable Development Goals SDG 6 with target 6.5.1, implementing IWRM at all levels and transboundary water cooperation (TWC) [15,16]. IWRM gained significance during the Rio de Janeiro Summit and Dublin Conference in 1992.…”