Research system performance across six environmental and climate related sustainable development goals in the Arab region

The Arab region faces substantial environmental and climate vulnerabilities, yet its scientific contribution across relevant Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has not been comprehensively characterized. This study assessed Arab countries’ research contributions to SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), SDG 13 (Climate Action), SDG 14 (Life Below Water), and SDG 15 (Life on Land). Scopus-indexed publications classified through the 2025 SciVal SDG mapping were analyzed for 2005–2024 and benchmarked against the European Union (EU27) and North America. Indicators included scholarly output, population- and GDP-normalized output, Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI), journal-quartile placement, highly cited output, citations per publication, and collaboration. Annual trends were evaluated using Kendall’s rank correlation and Sen’s slope. Across the six non-mutually exclusive SDG datasets, the Arab region recorded 305,582 SDG-specific publication assignments. Output increased significantly for all six SDGs ( p < 0.001); SDG 7 had the largest publication volume ( n = 108,462), while SDG 13 had the highest compound annual growth rate (29.8%). Absolute and population-normalized output remained below the EU27 and North America, whereas GDP-normalized output was higher across all six SDGs, indicating substantial publication activity relative to economic scale but not necessarily greater research efficiency. Saudi Arabia and Egypt led in absolute output, whereas Qatar ranked prominently after population normalization and Tunisia and Lebanon after GDP normalization. Regional FWCI exceeded the world benchmark of 1.00 for every SDG, ranging from 1.26 for SDG 14 to 1.89 for SDG 13, although marked cross-country variation was observed. The region recorded 132,597 Q1 publication assignments and 46,458 assignments within the global top 10% citation percentile. International collaboration ranged from 51.3 to 64.5% across SDGs and increased significantly over time, while national collaboration accounted for approximately 16–18% and indexed academic–corporate collaboration for approximately 1–3%. From a sustainability knowledge-systems perspective, the findings show rapidly expanding output and global connectivity alongside persistent geographic concentration and limited nationally and corporately embedded collaboration. These patterns indicate selective research strengths rather than overall regional parity or demonstrated policy impact and support differentiated capacity-building, stronger national and regional networks, and broader pathways for translating research into sustainability action.