Library and Information Science (LIS) in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Research from 2012–2021: An Informetric Perspective

The United Nations’ (UN) call for the global community to support and contribute to the realization of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) has thrust universities and their units of research into the pool of stakeholders. Specifically, the universities have been encouraged to support and contribute to SDGs through the conduct of research, teaching, capacity building and governance. This Chapter focuses on one of the aforementioned ways of supporting SDGs, namely research, to assess the library and information science’s (LIS) contribution to SDGs research between 2012 and 2021. The data was obtained from SciVal and analysed using a variety of tools to examine the trend of publication of research outputs that are linked to SDGs, determine LIS’ percentage share of SDGs’ publication outputs and impact, and assess the research focus areas in the LIS papers that are linked to SDGs. The findings show that LIS research on the SDGs has continued to increase over time, LIS contributes less than one percent of the SDGs publications (research), and that owing to its multidisciplinary, LIS contributes research and impact to all SDGs. The Chapter recommends the use of the SDGs (in addition to national and regional agenda) as a framework for LIS research in order to contribute to the realization of the UN’s Agenda 2030.