Social and academic impact of the Sustainable Development Goals through the lens of intellectual capital

Purpose This study aims to analyse the social and academic impact of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on documents and authors profiles from the perspective of Intellectual Capital (IC) theory. This overarching aim is addressed through two sub-objectives: (1) to examine the impact of the SDGs on scholarly documents and (2) to explore the impact of the SDGs on authors profiles. These two sub-objectives correspond to two complementary analyses: a documentary analysis and an authorship analysis. Design/methodology/approach This theoretical–empirical study is based on a search conducted in the Web of Science and Scopus databases, which, after applying the relevant filters, resulted in 41 documents and 121 associated authors. Two types of statistical analyses were performed: a document-level analysis (descriptive) and an author-level analysis (using count data models), with the aim of complementing the information obtained from both sources. The research hypotheses corresponding to each sub-objective were supported. Findings Across both analyses, SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure) and SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals) emerge as the most impactful from both a social and academic perspective, as they exhibit the highest number of published documents, academic citations and visits originating from academic and non-academic readers. The count data models indicate that the number of published documents is the most significant variable in determining the social and academic impact of authors. Specifically, publishing on the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development has strong potential to shape science and society. Supported by the promotion of open science, this can facilitate the dissemination of these SDGs and raise public awareness of their achievement. Originality/value The research objectives addressed in this paper have not been previously reported. The SDGs are reinforced as impactful topics in both the social and academic domains through the theoretical and empirical findings of this study. IC theory is shown to be a consistent and useful framework for SDGs analysis, both in documentary and authorship assessments. We provide a table with practical implications titled “Intellectual Capital Action Plan for Achieving the 17 SDGs”. This work offers insights that may be valuable for assessing progress towards the 169 goals and 231 indicators established by the United Nations, as it provides an academic and social perspective that may be beneficial for expert evaluators monitoring SDGs achievement.