scholarly journals Does public outreach impede research performance? Exploring the ‘researcher’s dilemma’ in a sustainability research center

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (5) ◽  
pp. 710-720 ◽  
Author(s):  
Omar Kassab
Keyword(s):  
General Public ◽  
Evaluation System ◽  
Career Advancement ◽  
Sustainability Science ◽  
Research Performance ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Research Center ◽  
Public Outreach ◽  
Sustainability Research ◽  
Broad Consensus

Abstract Researchers and universities are increasingly urged to communicate their findings to the general public. Despite the broad consensus about the necessity of this task, researchers are still reluctant to engage in public outreach activities. One major reason is that while being somewhat time consuming, engagement in public outreach is not adequately reflected in the metrics that are relevant for career advancement. The study at hand examines to what extent this dilemma is empirically justified. A series of statistical analyses are carried out on the basis of data from a sustainability science research center in Switzerland. The study comes to the conclusion that research performance is overall positively associated to engagement in public outreach activities. This insight has implications for the academic incentive and evaluation system.

scholarly journals Paradigm Found? Immanent Critique to Tackle Interdisciplinarity and Normativity in Science for Sustainable Development

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 3805 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chad Boda ◽  
Turaj Faran
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Sustainability Science ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Research Strategy ◽  
Normative Values ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
Sustainability Research ◽  
Immanent Critique ◽  
Potential Strategy

The ambition of this two-part article is to argue for immanent critique as a research strategy in sustainability studies. We do this by picking up and developing two central, cross-cutting themes in sustainability research, namely interdisciplinarity and normativity. It is widely suggested that the problem-driven and solution-focused orientation in sustainability studies necessitates interdisciplinarity and an engagement with questions of normativity, each creating problems regarding how science is conducted. For interdisciplinarity, questions remain regarding by what scientific procedure rational (i.e., non-arbitrary) interdisciplinarity can be accomplished. For normativity, it is unclear whether normativity can be addressed scientifically, or only politically; in other words, can normativity be objectively incorporated in sustainability research, and if so, how? Ultimately, the paper asks and answers the following questions: when should a researcher move from one discipline to another in sustainability research and, how do we judge the validity of the normative values that are deemed necessary for sustainability? In Part I, we show the silences, gaps, vagueness and inadequacies of how these themes are currently addressed in sustainability science literature, and from this move to propose immanent critique as a potential strategy for dealing with them in a scientific manner. In Part II, we exemplify our strategy by applying it to re-construct the debate over sustainable development, by far the most prominent topical focus in sustainability science research, producing a novel systematized typology of sustainable development approaches in the process. We conclude with reflections on how this paper amounts to an initial contribution to the construction of a Lakatosian research programme in sustainability studies.

scholarly journals Introducing and testing an advanced quantitative methodological approach for the evaluation of research centers: a case study on sustainability science

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Omar Kassab ◽  
Rüdiger Mutz ◽  
Hans-Dieter Daniel
Keyword(s):  
Sustainability Science ◽  
Research Evaluation ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Research Performance ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Research Center ◽  
Research Centers ◽  
Evaluation Approach ◽  
Ex Post ◽  
Global University

Abstract With the growing complexity of societal and scientific problems, research centers have emerged to facilitate the conduct of research beyond disciplinary and institutional boundaries. While they have become firmly established in the global university landscape, research centers raise some critical questions for research evaluation. Existing evaluation approaches designed to assess universities, departments, projects, or individual researchers fail to capture some of the core characteristics of research centers and their participants, including the diversity of the involved researchers, at what point in time they join and leave the research center, or the intensity of their participation. In addressing these aspects, this article introduces an advanced approach for the ex post evaluation of research centers. It builds on a quasi-experimental within-group design, bibliometric analyses, and multilevel statistics to assess average and individual causal effects of research center affiliation on participants along three dimensions of research performance. The evaluation approach is tested with archival data from a center in the field of sustainability science. Against a widely held belief, we find that participation in research centers entails no disadvantages for researchers as far as their research performance is concerned. However, individual trajectories varied strongly.

scholarly journals Can altmetrics reflect societal impact considerations?: Exploring the potential of altmetrics in the context of a sustainability science research center

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Omar Kassab ◽  
Lutz Bornmann ◽  
Robin Haunschild
Keyword(s):  
Sustainability Science ◽  
Expert Panel ◽  
Research Evaluation ◽  
Research Output ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Research Proposal ◽  
Research Center ◽  
Societal Impact ◽  
Publicly Funded ◽  
Ex Ante

Societal impact considerations play an increasingly important role in research evaluation. In particular, in the context of publicly funded research, proposal templates commonly include sections to outline strategies for achieving broader impact. Both the assessment of the strategies and the later evaluation of their success are associated with challenges in their own right. Ever since their introduction, altmetrics have been discussed as a remedy for assessing the societal impact of research output. On the basis of data from a research center in Switzerland, this study explores their potential for this purpose. The study is based on the papers (and the corresponding metrics) published by about 200 either accepted or rejected applicants for funding by the Competence Center Environment and Sustainability (CCES). The results of the study seem to indicate that altmetrics are not suitable for reflecting the societal impact of research that was considered: The metrics do not correlate with the ex ante considerations of an expert panel.

How to Podcast in Archaeology

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-266
Author(s):  
Colin P. Amundsen ◽  
Cristina Belmonte
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
General Public ◽  
Public Archaeology ◽  
Social Media Marketing ◽  
Public Outreach ◽  
Trial And Error ◽  
Business World ◽  
The Public ◽  
Broad Approach

ABSTRACTThe problem for archaeologists doing public outreach could be that we do not know who our audience is. Marketing to just the public at large is an extremely broad approach filled with the pitfalls of not engaging enough of the public, so it might be necessary to first find out who within the general public would have the most interest in your discovery and then tailor your presentation to that audience. At the podcastCooking with Archaeologistswe are using digital media, social media marketing, and our experience from the business world to do just that. Podcasting has been a trial-and-error project filled with uncertainty and doubt, and for archaeologists engaged in public archaeology it might be a practical approach to reaching the public and a medium to build an engaged and interested audience. In this “how-to” article, we will reveal what we have learned from this exciting and somewhat demanding venture and suggest how podcasting is a democratizing venture that connects the public to archaeology and the archaeologist.

scholarly journals Opinion: Endogenizing culture in sustainability science research and policy

2015 ◽  
Vol 112 (27) ◽  
pp. 8157-8159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcellus M. Caldas ◽  
Matthew R. Sanderson ◽  
Martha Mather ◽  
Melinda D. Daniels ◽  
Jason S. Bergtold ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sustainability Science ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Research And Policy

scholarly journals Constructing publics in museums’ science communication

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (8) ◽  
pp. 958-972
Author(s):  
Per Hetland
Keyword(s):  
Quality Assurance ◽  
Natural History ◽  
General Public ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Public Outreach ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Important Quality ◽  
Research Scientists

This article investigates how scientists at natural history museums construct publics in science communication and identifies four major constructions based on Braun and Schultz’s categories: the general public, the pure public, the affected public, and the partisan public. This study draws on data from 17 research scientists at two natural history research museums in Norway who were interviewed about their public outreach activities focusing on practices, settings, designated outcomes, scientists’ incentives to communicate science, and, finally, the speaking positions available for the different publics; the aim was to provide an understanding of the four constructed publics in museums’ science communication. When scientists construct different publics, they emphasize relevance as an important quality assurance device.

Where are the social science research performance interfaces?

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 (1) ◽  
pp. 14756
Author(s):  
Xianmei Wang ◽  
Hanhui Hu ◽  
Xiaoran Hu
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Research Performance ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
The Social
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