Abstract
Maintaining the continued flow of benefits from science, as well as societal support for science, requires sustained engagement between the research community and the general public. On the basis of data from an international survey of 1092 participants (634 established researchers and 458 students) in 55 countries and 315 research institutions, we found that institutional recognition of engagement activities is perceived to be undervalued relative to the societal benefit of those activities. Many researchers report that their institutions do not reward engagement activities despite institutions’ mission statements promoting such engagement. Furthermore, institutions that actually measure engagement activities do so only to a limited extent. Most researchers are strongly motivated to engage with the public for selfless reasons, which suggests that incentives focused on monetary benefits or career progress may not align with researchers’ values. If institutions encourage researchers’ engagement activities in a more appropriate way – by moving beyond incentives – they might better achieve their institutional missions and bolster the crucial contributions of researchers to society.
Highlights
Researcher engagement in policy deemed societally beneficial yet unrewarded Gerald G Singh1,2*, Vinicius F Farjalla3, Bing Chen4, Andrew E Pelling5,6,7, Elvan Ceyhan8, Martin Dominik9, Eva Alisic10, Jeremy Kerr6,7, Noelle E Selin11, Ghada Bassioni12, Elena Bennett13, Andrew H Kemp14, and Kai MA Chan2
Our questions focused on the institutional metrics and perceived level of reward and societal benefit for various activities, as well as how engagement is evaluated
We concluded the survey by asking respondents if they would prefer that their institutions consider different metrics for each category of engagement, to place higher emphasis on rewards and expectations, and/or to not reward the activity at all
Summary
Readership, etc Quality of representation of science Novelty of the engagement activity Number of times engagement activities occur Magnitude of work and expertise behind each effort (eg writing op-eds > signing petitions) Perceived esteem (eg keynote talks > invited talks > uninvited talks) Intended or positive changes as a result of the activity that engagement activities are evaluated on an ad hoc basis and are considered narrowly (relative to the multiple dimensions of engagement excellence we identified). We expected that different motivations (including self-oriented ones, such as career benefits, and selfless ones, such as combatting poor policy) would be associated with different engagement activities
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