This bibliometric study analyzes 1433 former reviews on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Sustainability, providing a comprehensive overview of the evolving research landscape in this domain. Notably, we observe a substantial annual growth rate of 74% in publications and a remarkable 171% increase in total citations from 2016 to 2022, reflecting a growing interest in this area. We identify the leading countries and institutions contributing to quantitative reviews on SDGs and Sustainability. SDG 12 (Sustainable Consumption and Production) emerges as the most extensively studied and is highly represented in influential journals like Sustainability and the Journal of Cleaner Production. Across various research fields, SDGs 12 and 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) stand out, with SDGs 4 (Quality Education), 5 (Gender Equality), and 15 (Life on Land) showing significance in specific domains. Thematic analysis reveals key topics like environmental protection, circular economy, life cycle assessment, and supply chain management, with strong connections to SDG 12. Further clusters highlight environmental management, renewable energy, and energy policy linked to SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), along with a smaller cluster focusing on urbanization driven by SDG 11. Network analysis emphasizes the critical roles of SDGs 12 and 9 (Industry Innovation and Infrastructure) in achieving a sustainable future. However, alternative social network indicators highlight the potential influence of SDGs 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions), and 17 (Partnerships for the Goals) on other goals. Intriguingly, mainstream SDG research predominantly focuses on SDGs 3 and 7, presenting challenges due to the volume and complexity of related publications. While SDG 7 could find suitable outlets in leading journals, addressing SDG 3’s (Good Health and Well Being) complexity remains a formidable task. Nevertheless, conducting bibliometric studies on SDGs 3, 7, and 13 (Climate Action) offers promising opportunities in future if the associated challenges are addressed effectively.

In the four months following its launch in December 2022, ChatGPT, the LLM bot employing deep learning algorithms to generate human-like responses, has been the subject of numerous research articles. Identifying early attention to this research is highly intriguing. As citations for these publications may take time to accumulate, our study focused on examining the early attention of ChatGPT research using the Altmetric Attention Score (AAS), a composite attention score developed by Digital Science. Our findings from the total set of publications and the top publications according to the highest AAS scores reveal the following trends: (i) The United States, Japan, and the United Kingdom are the top countries that published most of the top research articles related to ChatGPT. (ii) The most frequently mentioned source titles include journals like Nature, Science and preprint sources like medRxiv and arXiv. (iii) Among the fields of research (FoR) to which ChatGPT publications align, ‘information and computing sciences’ and ‘biomedical and clinical sciences’ received the highest mentions. (iv) Five major clusters were identified in the network formed by the interlinkage of FoRs, and the most prominent themes discussed in top articles within these five clusters include ChatGPT usage in medical writing and determining ChatGPT’s role in scientific publishing. (v) Scientists are found to be the major user category demonstrating the highest level of interest in ChatGPT research. By capturing these early trends in ChatGPT research and the early attention to this research, our work offers valuable insights for ChatGPT enthusiasts, researchers, and policymakers in fields such as education, information sciences, biomedical sciences, scientific publishing, and many others.