text2sdg: An R package to Monitor Sustainable Development Goals from Text

TL;DR

The text2sdg R package enables detection of Sustainable Development Goals in various text data sources, supporting monitoring efforts and validation of SDG detection methods across diverse texts.

Contribution

It introduces an open-source R package that detects SDGs in any text, expanding monitoring capabilities beyond proprietary research databases.

Findings

Supports diverse text sources for SDG detection

Facilitates validation and improvement of SDG detection methods

Enhances monitoring of SDGs in academic and non-academic texts

Abstract

Monitoring progress on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is important for both academic and non-academic organizations. Existing approaches to monitoring SDGs have focused on specific data types; namely, publications listed in proprietary research databases. We present the text2sdg package for the R language, a user-friendly, open-source package that detects SDGs in any kind of text data using different existing or custom-made query systems. The text2sdg package thereby facilitates the monitoring of SDGs for a wide array of text sources and provides a much-needed basis for validating and improving extant methods to detect SDGs from text.