The state of sustainability reporting at Canadian universities
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the state of sustainability reporting in Canada's higher education sector, while understanding who is reporting on sustainability performance, how is information being reported, and what is being reported. Design/methodology/approach – A framework with ten categories and 56 indicators based on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines and campus sustainability assessment tools was developed to analyse the contents of a cross‐sectional sample of sustainability reports published by Canada's largest 25 universities (by student enrolment). Each author analysed two to three reports. Evidences were checked for accuracy by a different author and finally discussed in a focus group. Findings – The analysis has shown that sustainability reporting is an uncommon and diverse practice at Canadian universities. Primarily under the coordination of sustainability offices or students, seven universities published sustainability reports in the analyzed period (2006‐2008). While all reports shared a non‐integrated indicators framework, a variety of approaches were used in the selection of indicators. Reports generally had limited scopes emphasizing eco‐efficiency. The potential value of current documents as a tool to inform sustainability‐oriented decisions is limited. Practical implications – Findings are particularly relevant to university administrators and sustainability offices planning to publish or enhance sustainability reports. The paper also explores the challenges of applying the GRI guidelines to the higher education sector. Originality/value – Most descriptive studies on sustainability reporting have addressed large multinational corporations. This paper is one of the first to address the incipient practices of higher education institutions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.046 | 0.127 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.022 | 0.043 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.010 | 0.008 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.017 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".