Societal Facets: classification of societal needs
The Societal Impact Report allows you to assess and demonstrate the impact your research beyond the academic world. To address the diversity of societal needs our evaluation framework uses a classification that is based on a modified PESTLE (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, Environmental) typology. We enhanced the existing classification for a more comprehensive analysis, by splitting the ‘Social’ grouping into ‘Human Capital’, ’Medical’ and ‘Social & Cultural’ and by renaming ‘Political’ as ‘Political & Policy’, and ‘Legal’ as ‘Legal & Governance’.
We refer to this modified classification as societal facets. Below is a description of these eight societal facets:
| Societal facet | Description |
|---|---|
| Political & Policy | The need for effective political systems and policymaking institutions. |
| Legal & Governance | The need for effective interpretation and conversion of political and policy decisions into legislation. |
| Economic | The need for improving or accelerating economic development and wealth creation. |
| Human Capital | The need for continuous development of human capital through all forms of education from pre-school education to professional training in the workplace. |
| Medical | The need for a healthy population. |
| Social & Cultural | The need for diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI), as well as security, cultural and spiritual development. |
| Technological | The need for tangible benefits via technological improvements across all areas, such as healthcare, energy consumption and information access. |
| Environmental | The need to address climate change and environmental protection and remediation. |
The following sections explain how the data used in the Societal Impact Report is mapped to the relevant societal facets. Some data types are mapped to all eight facets, and some only to relevant facets.
Publications to Societal Facets mapping using the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs)
Mapping of Publications to Societal Facets is based on the UN SDGs. Societal Facets are mapped to UN SDGs and publications are mapped to UN SDGs, thus creating a mapping of publications to Societal Facets.
Societal Facets to SDG mapping:
| SDG Goal | Human Capital | Social & Cultural | Environmental | Economic | Technological | Medical | Legal & Governance | Political & Policy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. No poverty | X | X | ||||||
| 2. Zero hunger | X | X | ||||||
| 3. Good health and well-being | X | |||||||
| 4. Quality education | X | |||||||
| 5. Gender equality | X | |||||||
| 6. Clean water and sanitation | X | |||||||
| 7. Affordable and clean energy | X | X | ||||||
| 8. Decent work and economic growth | X | X | ||||||
| 9. Industry, innovation and infrastructure | X | X | ||||||
| 10. Reduced inequalities | X | X | X | |||||
| 11. Sustainable cities and communities | X | |||||||
| 12. Responsible consumption and production | X | X | ||||||
| 13. Climate action | X | X | ||||||
| 14. Life below water | X | |||||||
| 15. Life on land | X | |||||||
| 16. Peace, justice and strong institutions | X | |||||||
| 17. Partnerships for the goals | X |
Publications to SDG mapping
Each of the UN SDGs was compared to Micro Citation Topics. Selected Micro Citation Topics and their associated publications were mapped to one or more of the 17 SDGs.
Download the April 2025 mapping.
Each time the Micro Citation Topics are reviewed (annually), the Sustainable Development Goals mapping is updated accordingly.
Patents to Societal Facet mapping
- All Patent Applications and Patents are mapped to the Technological facet
Patent Citations to Articles are mapped to the Environmental, Medical and Technological facets
Ratings
The ratings reflect how an organization compares to other academic organizations globally, based on size-normalized indicators per societal facet. Organizations are categorized into performance tiers ranging from "Top 1%" to "Bottom 20%", with an additional "Below Threshold" tier for those without the minimum data required for indicator calculation.
Ratings use the following tiers:
| Rating tiers |
| Top 1% |
| Top 5% |
| Top 10% |
| Top 20% |
| Top 30% |
| Top 40% |
| Top 50% |
| Bottom 50% |
| Bottom 40% |
| Bottom 30% |
| Bottom 20% |
| Below threshold |
Forward-looking and retrospective indicators
To mitigate the challenge of lengthy delays between research being conducted and any resultant societal benefits, our evaluation framework contains both forward-looking and retrospective indicators.
Retrospective indicators offer insights into societal impact by retrospectively analyzing past outputs and activities that have had sufficient time to manifest their effects. They reveal how previous research efforts have contributed to societal outcomes, providing a picture of observed, tangible impact.
In contrast, forward-looking indicators analyze recent signals that suggest the potential for research outputs and activities to create societal impact in the future, though without any guarantee. These indicators can guide actions to either refine or adjust research strategy to achieve better outcomes. They can help determine whether the right teams are in place and are working on the most promising activities. Depending on the insights gained, this may lead to a course correction or a renewed focus, to enhance the likelihood of achieving a desired outcome.