Top Action Tips
for Academic Authors
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Connect your ideas.
Consider the relevance of SDGs to your research and signpost relevant SDGs in your research and writing.
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Consult your team.
Discuss research plans with team members and peers to determine how your plans address the SDGs you identified.
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Be specific.
Include analysis of relevant SDGs to specific areas of research, practice or policy, including the likely impact of a proposed intervention.
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Chart the transition.
Identify and explain how your research output will navigate the transition and translate from theory to practice.
See: Top Action Tips for connecting researchers to practitioners.
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Check your perspective.
Consider the composition and diversity of writing groups with reference to SDGs ‘5: Gender Equality’ and ‘10: Reduced Inequalities’.
Check to see whether and how they are inclusive of multiple perspectives (e.g., from the global north and south, and where possible, languages other than English).
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Check your perspective again.
Check to see whether and how your research topics address issues of race, gender and ethnicity and marginalized identities, such as indigenous populations.
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Link to the mission.
Explicitly link discussion of SDGs in your article or book proposal to the mission statement of a journal or a publisher before submission, as appropriate.
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Think frameworks.
Check the extent to which SDGs feature in frameworks and practice guidelines for your discipline or profession and propose ways in which SDGs could be included in future iterations.
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Advocate everywhere.
Advocate for inclusion of relevant SDGs in course outlines, projects and research programs for which you are responsible.
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Acknowledge barriers.
Acknowledge when the funding of publishing fees creates a barrier to publication (e.g., with authors in low- and middle-income countries); look for creative approaches to avoid unintended bias.