The importance of the UN Sustainable Development Goals for Magnetism and Superconductivity

The United Nations (UN) established 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 to be achieved by 2030. At the midterm milestone in 2023, scientific contributions are expected to demonstrate measurable progress toward these goals. However, Physical Sciences and Technology appear to lag behind disciplines such as Life Sciences \& Biomedicine and Social Sciences. This raises questions regarding differences in SDG-related performance across scientific fields. A bibliometric analysis was performed using the Clarivate Web of Science (WoS) SDG filter, comparing two related research domains: Magnetism and Superconductivity. The analysis considered (i) articles explicitly tagged for SDG relevance, (ii) the most cited publications, and (iii) contributions of selected individual authors. The analysis revealed a significant difference between the two disciplines: Magnetism demonstrated a strong SDG alignment, with 71.2\% of its articles receiving SDG tags, while Superconductivity showed a more limited engagement, with only ~18\% tagged. Moreover, a 2024 change in the WoS SDG filter reduced SDG-tagged article counts for both fields. Now, Magnetism shows 52.2\% SDGs-tagged articles, and Superconductivity 17.4\%. Thus, Superconductivity experienced a roughly 50\% reduction in SDGs-tagged publications. Magnetism research is performing relatively well in addressing SDGs, whereas Superconductivity shows limited visibility and alignment with sustainability themes. These findings underscore the need for strategic action by the superconductivity research community to contextualize their work within sustainability frameworks and strengthen contributions toward SDG-relevant applications, such as sustainable energy, efficient transport, and resilient infrastructure.