Abstract
BackgroundContemporary research should increasingly be carried out in the context of application. Nowotny called this new form of knowledge production Mode-2. In line with Mode-2 knowledge production, the Dutch government in 2006 initiated the so-called Academic Collaborative Centres (ACC) for Public Health. The aim of these ACCs is to build a regional, sustainable knowledge-sharing network to deliver socially robust knowledge. The present study aims to highlight the enabling and constraining push and pull factors of these ACCs in order to assess whether the ACCs are able to build and strengthen a sustainable integrated organizational network between public health policy, practice, and research.MethodsOur empirical analysis builds on a mixed methods design. Quantitative data was derived from records of a survey sent to all 11 ACCs about personnel investments, number and nature of projects, and earning power. Qualitative data was derived from 21 in-depth interviews with stakeholders involved. The interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed, and manually coded as favourable or unfavourable pull or push factors.ResultsThe extra funding appeared to be the most enabling push factor. The networks secured external grants for about 150 short- and long-term Mode-2 knowledge production projects in the past years. Enabling pull factors improved, especially the number of policy-driven short-term research projects. Exchange agents were able to constructively deal with the constraining push factors, like university’s publication pressure and budget limitations. However, the constraining pull factors like local government’s involvement and their low demand for scientific evidence were difficult to overcome.ConclusionsA clear improvement of the organizational networks was noticed whereby the ACC’s were pushed rather than pulled. Efforts are needed to increase the demand for scientific and socially robust evidence from policymakers and to resolve the regime differences between the research and policy systems, in order to make the bidirectionality of the links sustainable.
Highlights
Contemporary research should increasingly be carried out in the context of application
Qualitative data was derived from 21 in-depth interviews with all Academic Collaborative Centres (ACC) coordinators in their role as exchange agents (n = 11 out of 11, code EA), program participants of the funding organization ZonMw because of their role as financier on behalf of the national government (n = 2 out of 10; selection criteria: 1 vice-chair and 1 member of ZonMw commission ACC-program; code Z), board members of the Association of Dutch Public Health Service (PHS) because of their role in advocating the relevance of ACCs (n = 3 out of 25; criteria: board member and actively supporting the ACC; code A), and civil servants using short-term research project results (n = 5 civil servants out of 11; criteria: personally involved in short-term research according to coordinator; code C)
All the in-depth interviews were held by an independent researcher who was not involved in any ACC
Summary
Contemporary research should increasingly be carried out in the context of application. The authors concluded that the line which formerly demarcated society from science is regularly being transgressed and that the resulting closer interaction between science and society signals the emergence of a new kind of science: contextualized or context-sensitive science They called this new form of knowledge production Mode-2. Contemporary research should increasingly be carried out in the context of application, that is, problems should be formulated from the very beginning in dialogues among a large number of different actors and disciplines, taking their perspectives into account. This is generally true for all types of science, as problems in our society are very complicated. Tackling these complex problems requires multidisciplinary skills and expertise and open-ended chains to facilitate a dynamic multidirectional knowledge production process
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