The Role of Small and Medium Enterprises in Realizing the Sustainable Development Goals

Dear Colleagues,

The UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development provides a valuable global framework that the states could follow at national, regional, and local levels to accomplish the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Gathering reliable data is critical in accurately assessing the progress toward the 2030 agenda. However, unlike larger enterprises, SMEs may struggle to report correctly on sustainability because of lack of resources, knowledge, and budget. Nonetheless, considering their importance in most economies,  it is necessary to know to what extent small business sectors contribute to advance the SDGs.

Higher education institutions and governmental agencies have served as catalysts supporting SMEs' sustainability efforts, which generally are not considered in Voluntary National Reviews delivered to the UN High-Level Political Forum. On the other hand, the current collection of scientific literature about how small and medium-sized firms in all sectors are helping to advance the targets in the 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development is limited.

Therefore, we aim to expand the literature on conceptual models, pragmatic experiences and reviews about SMEs-related strategies to accomplish the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by inviting sustainability scholars and practitioners to submit their high-quality papers to this Special Issue. We particularly welcome submissions from institutions located in the Global South or other institutions worldwide focusing on the role of SMEs in the Global South.

Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Energy efficiency;
• Climate change;
• Higher education institutions and partnership with SMEs;
• Sustainability reporting;
• Industry 4.0 and SMEs;
• Sustainable finance;
• Innovation and SMEs;
• Sustainable development goals;
• Circular economy;
• Corporate social responsibility.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Luis Velazquez
Dr. Nora Munguia
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• energy efficiency
• climate change
• higher education institutions and partnership with SMEs
• sustainability reporting
• Industry 4.0 and SMEs
• sustainable finance
• innovation and SMEs
• sustainable development goals
• circular economy
• corporate social responsibility