Introduction

This page provides substantial evidence about the actions taken by the University of Patras for the impact of its sustainable operation. The public summary of all actions that University undertakes can be found at the official website of the University, see https://www.upatras.gr/en/university/sustainability/. 

Two institutional documents are useful to the reader (unfortunately, only in Greek):

"Sustainable University of Patras in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals" is the main document that shows the strategic directions of the University of Patras in regards to the UN SDGs.

"Sustainable operation & development :development: our way in 2023 towards the sustainableSustainable developmentDevelopment goals"Goals" is the document reporting on how the University of Patras addresses each one of the 17 UN SDGs. In this report, we use data from various sources. Specifically, for each Goal, we refer to some emblematic activities in 2023, which are accompanied by indicative research publications of the same year. The classification of these works in each Goal has been made by Scopus, the bibliographic database by Elsevier, which is the main database consulted by the Hellenic Authority of Higher Education. At the same time, indicative theses and dissertations were found at our institutional repository “Nemertes”, which is open to the public, showing how young researchers and their teachers are examining the topics of the Goals. At the same time, since 2021, the University of Patras has designed and implemented a set of actions, activities and projects in eleven carefully selected SDGs. Based on the report "Sustainable University of Patras in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals" and the action plan developed for the achievement of these key Goals, in our report we briefly list -after the profile of each goal- the progress that has been made. This is done by using a four-level color scale with the lightest color meaning little progress and the darkest color meaning great progress. Indicative events have been selected from the multitude of activities, those that were accessible to the public. Many of the lectures and conferences are addressed to both the scientific and the general public, while it is important to note that the knowledge and cultural units, such as the Museum of Science & Technology, the Conference and Cultural Center, the Library & Information Center (LIC), etc. contribute to the achievement of the Goals. Also important is the contribution of student volunteer groups, which proves that the future of our country is distinguished by a pure interest in community service.

The following information is structured according to the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings indicators list and information and data will be compliled in steps. While this page reports activities for the year 2023, it might be the case that several activities remain active and valid since earlier years.

The graph above shows the published work of our researchers in 2023 in each SDG, along with the citations they have received (source: SciVal). Citations reflect one aspect of the impact of these publications, but they are not the only metric. Looking at other metrics, such as the Field Weighted Citation Impact, an indicator that explores the impact of a work in its specific field and therefore in its own context, can show us how much more influential it is compared to others, reveals very interesting data. For example, although the index of publications on Goals 1, 2 and 5 seems low, the FCWI is the highest. In practice, this means that publications on Goals 1-Zero Poverty, 2-Zero Hunger and 5-Gender Equality had a very high impact, see 1 with 3.32, 2 with 3.37 and 5 with 9.71.