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Sustainable development policies and interventions: A bibliometric analysis of the contributions of the academic community

Authors: Mamudu A. Akudugu,Matthew C. Ogwu
Journal: Journal of Cleaner Production
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Publish date: 2024-1
ISSN: 0959-6526 DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.139919
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The study’s methodological approach to searching for regional publications contains a significant flaw. The authors relied on a single, overly narrow search string for each region, such as “sustainable development in Americas”.

This specific phrasing would only capture a tiny fraction of the relevant literature, missing all articles that use more common regional descriptors like:

“Sustainable development in Latin America”
“Sustainable development in North America”
“Sustainable development in South America”
Or even country-specific terms like “sustainable development in Brazil” or

“sustainable development in the united states”

 

I tested this on Scopus through a quick search. Using just these five phrases, I found 110 articles; a number drastically higher than the 17 publications for the entire Americas reported in the study.

 

This indicates that the reported disparities in regional publication numbers are likely not a true reflection of scholarly output but an artifact of an incomplete search strategy. This fundamental data collection issue potentially compromises the study’s core comparative findings and conclusions.

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