ABSTRACT

The field of sustainability has evolved considerably since the report “Our Common Future” was published in 1987. Whereas matters related to sustainable development used to be of marginal interest in the 1980s, it has substantially evolved since, and have become mainstream. As a result, there is a plethora of research on different aspects, whose focus has also been influenced by societal developments. This line of thinking also applies to sustainability research in higher education, a special and central field. Unfortunately, the variety of research on matters of sustainable development in universities makes it difficult to obtain an insight into its current status, and to ascertain how it has evolved since 1987. Based on the perceived need to fill this gap, a study focusing on the evolution of university-based sustainability research literature has been undertaken. The study entailed approximately 1700 papers published between 1987 and 2019, being one of the most comprehensive studies on this field ever undertaken. Apart from performing a bibliometric analysis using science mapping software tools, the research clustered the research into some key areas. The results suggest that, whereas impressive, the evolution of university-based sustainability research has been uneven, and calls for a more balanced emphasis to as to cover some research areas which have so far been neglected. The implications of this work are twofold: it will support the further development of the university-based sustainability research literature, and will help to address some thematic gaps, which are seen today, and to which greater attention is needed.

摘要

自 1987 年发布“我们共同的未来”报告以来，可持续发展领域已经发生了很大变化。虽然与可持续发展相关的问题在 1980 年代曾经是微不足道的，但此后已经发生了实质性的变化，并已成为主流。因此，有大量不同方面的研究，其重点也受到社会发展的影响。这一思路也适用于高等教育这一特殊和中心领域的可持续性研究。不幸的是，大学关于可持续发展问题的研究多种多样，因此很难深入了解其现状，也很难确定自 1987 年以来它是如何演变的。已经开展了一项以大学为基础的可持续性研究文献演变的研究。该研究涉及 1987 年至 2019 年间发表的大约 1700 篇论文，是该领域有史以来最全面的研究之一。除了使用科学绘图软件工具进行文献计量分析外，该研究还将研究集中到一些关键领域。结果表明，尽管令人印象深刻，但基于大学的可持续性研究的发展并不均衡，因此需要更加平衡地强调一些迄今为止被忽视的研究领域。这项工作的意义是双重的：它将支持以大学为基础的可持续性研究文献的进一步发展，并将有助于解决今天看到的一些主题差距，