Tropical Medicine and International Health and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

In September 2015, at the general assembly of the United Nations, all 193 member states approved the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – the 2030 Agenda in short 1. At the heart of the 2030 Agenda are 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with 169 targets. The 2030 Agenda provides a negotiated and undisputed framework with a normative vision for humanity. It should serve as a shared compass to transform our world into a better, more equitable and solidary place for current and future generations 1, 2. Academia and the scientific community are pressed to pay their share and lead the way towards achieving the SDGs. Indeed, researchers from all disciplines, together with other stakeholders and civil society, are invited to co-create and test new approaches to advance sustainable development 3. Importantly, the newly generated knowledge must be transformed into actionable and scalable solutions to address the wicked problems that are inherent to sustainable development in a globalised world 4-6. Monitoring progress towards the SDGs and its targets is critical, and the urgency of taking action from the current unsustainable path to the desired sustainable development cannot be emphasised enough 7. This calls for academia and the scientific community to act expediently and all over the world. While new journals have been launched (e.g. Nature Sustainability; see: https://www.nature.com/natsustain/) and special issues have been published in multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinary journals (e.g. GAIA, June 2019 issue; see: https://www.oekom.de/zeitschrift/gaia-2/), a systematic classification of scientific outputs in the peer-reviewed literature according to their contribution to the SDGs is called for but currently missing 8. We take this issue forward and propose a subtle yet significant transformation of how research is being reported and disseminated in Tropical Medicine and International Health. As of January 2020, Tropical Medicine and International Health adds a novel feature to original research articles, reviews and editorials. As part of the submission process, prospective authors must specify the contribution of their research to one or several of the SDGs. This information will increase the visibility of the journal’s contribution towards the SDGs and allows for monitoring short-, mid- and long-term trends of dynamically shifting research foci. The SDG(s) addressed will appear on the title page, just after the abstract (if any) and the keywords. This novel reporting feature will help promote the 2030 Agenda and encourage authors and readers to become more cognizant about the SDGs and their interconnectedness. In turn, the new reporting feature might foster innovative solutions towards achieving the 2030 Agenda. Moreover, the reporting scheme will allow for a regular and quantitative appraisal of the different SDGs targeted by research published in Tropical Medicine and International Health. Apart from SDG 3 (‘Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages’), other SDGs are directly or indirectly interacting with health and thus promote or jeopardise health and well-being 9. The complex interlinkages of the SDGs can be visualised and novel solutions sought at the interface of SDGs. To assess the specific contributions of recently published articles in Tropical Medicine and International Health to the 2030 Agenda, we systematically screened the titles and abstracts of the 216 articles published between January 2018 and July 2019. First, SDGs were independently assigned by two of the authors (AG and AL), using the SDG targets as main reference (Appendix). In this short-term analysis the mean time from publication to citation sampling was 15 months (range 5-23 months). To assign SDG 17 (‘Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development’), authors’ affiliations were scrutinised for collaboration across countries and disciplines. Second, after assigning SDGs independently for the first 20 papers, discrepancies were discussed to generate a mutual understanding of the criteria. Third, one author (AG) continued assigning SDGs to the remaining 196 papers and discussed uncertainties with a second author (AL). Finally, a second independent screening of 10 randomly selected papers confirmed the consensus about assigning SDGs and thus assured internal consistency of our database. For subsequent analyses, the assigned SDGs were weighted by the total number of SDGs addressed by individual papers: if a single SDG was addressed, it received a weight of 1; if two SDGs were addressed, each received a weight of 0.5, and so on. Additonally, manuscript citation scores were sampled for each manuscript from online.wiley.com in mid-December 2019. Citation rates between papers targeting different SDGs or different numbers of SDGs were compared by one-way ANOVA. The number of SDGs addressed in our sample of 216 papers published in Tropical Medicine and International Health between January 2018 and July 2019 ranged from one to eight 10, 11. More than a third of the papers (n = 81, 37.5%) targeted two SDGs (Figure 1). There was no difference in manuscript citation rate by number of SDGs targeted, indicating that addressing multiple SDGs does not penalise citation rate in the short term (Figure 2). The SDG most often addressed was SDG 3, followed by SDG 17 and SDG 10 (‘Reduce inequality within and among countries’). None of the papers screened was classified as having addressed SDG 14 (‘Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development’) (Figure 3). There were no significant differences in manuscript citation rate across the different SDGs addressed (Figure 4). SDGs where Tropical Medicine and International Health has particular visibility, as measured by manuscript citation rate, include SDG 4 (‘Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’), SDG 5 (‘Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls’), SDG 15 (‘Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss’) and SDG 16 (‘Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels’). Common themes emerged in publications addressing SDG 3 (good health and well-being), along with other SDGs. For example, research that also tackled SDG 4 (quality education) predominately focused on assessing the effectiveness of public health interventions delivered through the education sector. For SDG 5 (gender equality), research focused on maternal health or explored gender differences in disease susceptibility or treatment response. For SDG 15 (life on land), research predominantly focused on the impact of land use on insect vectors and the transmission of vector-borne disease. SDG 16 (peace, justice and strong institutions) explored the delivery of health care to poor, marginalised or stigmatised populations. Figure 5 shows the connections between different SDGs in our sample of 216 papers published in Tropical Medicine and International Health over an 18-month period starting in January 2018. Given the fact that SDGs 3, 10 and 17 were the most prominent ones, a triangle emerges. Further strong relationships between SDG 1 (‘End poverty in all its forms everywhere’) and SDG 10 (reduced inequalities), between SDG 5 (gender equality) and SDG 17 (partnerships for the goals), between SDG 4 (quality education) and SDG 17 (partnerships for the goals) and between SDG 3 (good health and well-being) and SDG 16 (peace, justice and strong institutions) become apparent. Based on our experiences from assigning SDGs to already published articles, a method to assign SDGs for papers that will be published in future issues of Tropical Medicine and International Health is provided in Box 1. Prospective authors will be guided to this box, so that they can readily assign relevant SDGs to their forthcoming publications. The editors will assist should challenges arise. The observation that SDGs 3 and 17 (good health and well-being and partnerships for the goals) were the most prominent SDGs in recently published articles in Tropical Medicine and International Health is not surprising. The predominance of SDG 3 reflects that Tropical Medicine and International Health is a journal in the health area, with an emphasis on (i) tropical medicine and (ii) public, environmental and occupational health. Moreover, this finding sheds light on the journal’s policy to welcome particularly authors from low- and middle-income countries, and hence, to strengthen research partnerships. The strong connection between SDGs 10 and 17 (reduced inequalities and partnerships for the goals), obvious in Figure 5, indicates their essential interlinkage in striving for sustainable development and reduced poverty. Hence, a pathway originating in improving health may be extended through partnerships that consequently could reduce inequalities and poverty. Our screening of more than 200 published articles in Tropical Medicine and International Health revealed quantitative evidence of such interlinkages, highlighting the importance of equitable partnerships in achieving the SDGs. We see no significant difference in manuscript citation rate by SDG addressed or by the total number of SDGs addressed, indicating that work which tackles a diversity of SDGs does not suffer a penalty in citation rate. However, in this short-term analysis the mean time since publication was only 15 months (range 5–23 months). Tracking manuscript citation rate over longer time frames for the SDGs will provide a measure of the visibility and reach of SDG- focused research as we approach 2030. Prior research has investigated the interlinkages and synergies between the SDGs 4, 9. For example, SDG 3 (good health and well-being) has strong synergies with SDGs 1 (no poverty), 4, 5, 6, 9, 10 and 11 4, 9. These interactions are clearly reflected in the recent body of publications in Tropical Medicine and International Health. The interlinkages between SDG 3 and others underline the importance of fostering co-benefits through inter- and transdisciplinary research partnerships 12, 13. An additional strength of Tropical Medicine and International Health is research on SDG 15 (life on land), in particular the impact of land use on insect vectors and the transmission of vector-borne disease and SDG 16 (peace, justice and strong institutions) exploring the delivery of health care to poor, marginalised or stigmatised populations. These interlinkages between SDGs 3, 15 and 16 have not been highlighted in previous analyses of health research but reflect the aim of Tropical Medicine and International Health, which welcomes diverse research and research led by authors from low- and middle-income countries. In order to achieving sustainable development in its three dimensions – economic, social and environmental – in a balanced and integrated manner, research on SDGs needs to be more easily identifiable to inform governments, business and civil society 14. The unique and participatory reporting scheme of Tropical Medicine and International Health will reveal the contribution of the health and life sciences to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda and will allow for monitoring the thematic focus of Tropical Medicine and International Health, within the SDG framework.