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

Omar Kassab

doi:10.1093/scipol/scz024

Abstract

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.

Highlights

The old dream of unconditional support for basic research is long over
This study looks at one of these four centers, the Competence Center Environment and Sustainability (CCES), which engaged more than 800 people and operated between 2006 and 2016 to facilitate interand transdisciplinary research, education, and public outreach within and between the institutions that constitute the ETH Domain
In exactly the opposite direction, there were projects in the research center that carried out more public outreach activities per capita than producing scientific publications

Summary

Introduction

The old dream of unconditional support for basic research is long over. Governmental budget cuts and global competition for research funds have maneuvered the classic ‘ivory tower’ university system into rough waters. Paradigmatic shifts labeled as diverse as mode 2 knowledge production (Gibbons et al 1994; Nowotny et al 2003), postacademic science (Ziman 2002), or the triple-helix of university–government–industry relations (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 2000) all highlight the increased expectation toward academic research to yield growth-inducing innovation and applied knowledge of societal relevance (D’Este et al 2018; Hessels et al 2009). Not all researchers are pleased about this development because it steers them and their groups into a fundamental dilemma situation: on the one hand, the academic ‘publish or perish’ system pressurizes them to produce as many scientific publications as possible in the limited time available. At the same time they are expected to dedicate a share of their capacities to so-called ‘public outreach activities’, the outputs of which are barely or at least not adequately accounted for in the relevant metrics and career promotion. There is an evident mismatch between the academic’s mandate and the academic reward system

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Conclusion