Dear Colleagues,

There has been a plethora of initiatives to operationalise the 2030 Agenda and achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs). Yet, disconnected science practices from current sustainability trends are creating scepticism about the potential of academics to resolve important sustainability issues that compromise the wellbeing of all. Preliminary investigations identified that a few reasons for this were having a limited understanding of local research contexts; lacking an overall approach to sustainability; having limited knowledge about sustainability assessment, methods and techniques; and inadequacies in the higher education sector and collaboration processes amongst academics and practitioners to achieve sustainability targets (Franco, et al). Thus, the current research agenda needs to engage in more sustainability research impact practices that tackle real and contextualised issues across various sectors and hopefully achieve all SDGs. Together with theoretical basis for such exercises, this Special Issue contributes to sustainability science as it builds knowledge on how to resolve the apparent paradox between lack of knowledge on SDG operationalisation and localisation into the scientific research agenda.

Building upon the experience and lessons learnt by academics dealing with sustainability assessment methods and techniques, the aim of this Special Issue is to explore current sustainability research impact practices that tackle real and contextualised issues across different sectors and geographies whilst achieving the SDGs and overall 2030 Agenda. Thus, the key question we ask in this Special Issue is how do we as sustainability scholars study the operationalisation of SDGs and develop ways of understanding to achieve an impact in terms of both rhetoric and research?

Submissions that do not contain a strong component on sustainability assessment, methods and techniques for SDG operationalisation will not be considered.

Dr. Isabel B. Franco
Dr. John Mangan
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• SDGs
• 2030 Agenda
• sustainability science
• research impact
• sustainability assessment
• sustainability methods and techniques