Countries' research priorities in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals

We analyse the extent to which countries' research priorities align with their performance in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Our central assumption is that a misalignment between the investment in research areas and the socio-economic challenges may reduce the effectiveness of the investments in research to address those challenges. We develop a new method to identify research that is related to an SDG by examining which research areas in WoS have more publications that contain text that is related to SDG policy outlets. Then we propose a new method that combines all SDG indicators available, to measure the performance of countries in certain SDGs in relation to the top performers. Overall, we find that the SDGs' research priorities in which researchers in low and middle-income countries publish most in international journals, are not necessarily the research areas where those countries perform worst when analysing SDG indicators. SDG2 (Zero hunger) and SDG3 (Good health and well-being) are exceptions where we can find a degree of alignment, but in other challenges such as SDG12 (Responsible consumption and production) and SDG13 (Climate action), higher income countries perform worst and are not specialised in those research areas.