Assessing an institution’s sustainability research for STARS is often a manual and time-consuming process, which relies on manual analysis of online research databases or faculty responses to internal surveys. These methods tend to misrepresent and under-report sustainability research at the institution. This session presents a practical, open-source, and reproducible approach which was developed through cross-functional collaboration at Boston University between administrative units (Sustainability, Human Resources) and faculty thought partners (Economics, Computing & Data Science). The approach is built from OpenAlex, a free, open-source bibliometric tool with 260M+ scholarly works, 90M authors, and 100K institutions. The database allowed Boston University to identify current BU scholars in the database and, using a sustainability topical map to scan citation-networks, download publications tagged against SDGs.

This session, intended for STARS coordinators, research administrators, and sustainability officers, will introduce OpenAlex and give an overview of the step-by-step methodology used by Boston University to export SDG-tagged research papers. We will present validation results that demonstrate measurable increases in captured sustainability publications and improved representation across departments and research areas. The session will conclude with a discussion of limitations and provide a pathway for attendees to adopt and adapt the method at their campuses.

Underscoring this session is the importance of intra-campus collaboration and access to high-quality data for accurate representation of sustainability progress across colleges and universities. STARS provides a platform to advocate for data collection methods that benefit sustainability reporting while also supporting other department and university-wide priorities. This session acts as a case study on convergent and cross-functional data collection and analysis across campus.