Web of Science SDG visibility of superconductivity and magnetism: A comparative bibliometric analysis

The United Nations established 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. Bibliometric databases increasingly provide SDG classifications intended to identify research thematically connected with these goals. Here, we compare two related fields, Magnetism and Superconductivity, using the Clarivate Web of Science (WoS) SDG filter. The analysis considers overall WoS records, SDG-tagged records, Micro Citation Topics, and selected author-level result counts. Importantly, the resulting percentages quantify visibility or thematic alignment within the WoS SDG classification system; they do not measure the actual environmental, social, or economic impact of the research itself. In the August 2024 snapshot, 71.2% of the “magnet*” results and 30.7% of the “supercond*” results carried at least one SDG tag. After the updated SDG mapping became active, the corresponding February 2025 values were 52.2% and 17.4%, respectively. Thus, the number of tagged superconductivity records decreased by 43.2%, compared with 26.7% for magnetism. The Micro Citation Topic analysis shows that major superconductivity themes such as cuprates, critical current density, and superconducting magnets are weakly represented in the revised SDG mapping, whereas several magnetism-related medical, geophysical, and energy topics remain prominent. A sensitivity test indicates that an identifiable subset of potentially ambiguous “magnet*” records is far too small to explain the large difference in SDG-tagging rates. We conclude that the observed contrast primarily reflects differences in database classification and thematic visibility. Concrete, evidence-based contextualization of superconducting applications in clean energy, resilient infrastructure, healthcare, transport, and fusion may improve the discoverability of genuinely SDG-relevant work without conflating bibliometric recognition with sustainability impact.