Increasing global environmental crises, climate change, food insecurity and depletion of natural resources have made sustainable development one of the primary goals of the age. In line with these developments, interest in sustainability-based research is increasing in the academic world, and analyzing the content, orientation and impact of scientific publications gains importance in terms of revealing the current state of the literature. In this study, a total of 20,576 sustainability-themed academic publications published between 2024-2025 were analyzed by bibliometric method. Publications were analyzed in various dimensions such as countries, languages, publication types, publishers, subject areas, sustainable development goals (SDGs), author profiles and Web of Science categories. The findings show that the vast majority of publications originate from China, the US and India; more than 99% are produced in English; and original articles (81.8%) are by far the most preferred format. Elsevier, MDPI and Springer Nature are the most prominent publishing houses, while research is mostly focused on themes such as agriculture (30.99%), environmental sciences (24.10%) and climate action (35.73%). Within the scope of SDGs, it was determined that the most studied topic was “Zero Hunger”. In this context, the study presents the thematic, geographical and structural trends of sustainability-oriented scientific production in a holistic manner and aims to provide a guiding resource for both academic researchers and decision makers. The findings show that, in addition to Asia's expanding scientific output, English's hegemony, and the growing significance of open access publication, sustainability research is focusing on agriculture, the environment, and climate on a global scale. This emphasizes how future research must be more inclusive, balanced, and locally relevant. The findings also show that sustainability research has become interdisciplinary and can guide policy development processes by focusing on the interaction of agriculture, environment and climate.
Karahanlı et al. (2026) studied this question.