Science-society Interface Research Articles

Impacts of urban real-world labs: Insights from a co-evaluation process informed by structuration theory in Wuppertal-Mirke

To address the evaluation of the societal impact of real-world labs, we present a framework developed for the analysis of structure-agency dynamics: structuration theory. Using this tool on a neighbourhood level, we assess the outcomes of six projects on co-productive city-making.Ways of evaluating the societal impact of real-world labs as a transdisciplinary and transformative research format are under discussion. We present an evaluation approach rooted in structuration theory, with a focus on structure-agency dynamics at the science-society interface. We applied the theory with its four modalities (interpretation schemes, norms, allocative and authoritative resources) to the case of the Mirke neighbourhood in Wuppertal, Germany. Six projects promoted the capacity for co-productive city-making. The effects of the projects were jointly analysed in a co-evaluation process. Previously proposed subcategories of the modalities as an empirical operationalisation were tested and confirmed as being applicable. Five new subcategories were generated. The use of the modalities seems appropriate for co-evaluation processes. The tool is practical, focused on real-world effects, and suitable for transdisciplinary interpretation processes. We encourage further empirical testing of the tool, as well as development of the subcategories.

Public controversy and citizens' attitude formation about animal research: A case for scholarship and recommendations on conflicts at the science-society interface.

Activist groups attack animal research and put scientists and their institutions under pressure, whereas scientists often remain silent. We report an interdisciplinary research project driven by a communication science perspective on how citizens respond to news reports about animal research (3 experiments, overall N = 765) and a German science-initiated information platform ("Tierversuche verstehen"; controlled user study, N = 100). Findings demonstrate that a critical journalist perspective within neutral, two-sided news reports (e.g., skeptical expert statements or images of suffering animals) does not affect citizen opinion strongly. Information media provided by scientific institutions seem to be welcomed even by citizens who hold critical prior attitudes. From these results, we develop a set of recommendations for future public communication of animal research that builds on best practices in organizational and crisis communication. These suggestions are intended to empower animal researchers to actively participate in public debate to support citizens' informed attitude formation.

Citizen Science as a Framework for Improving the Science-Society Interface in Long-Term Care Research

Citizen Science as a Framework for Improving the Science-Society Interface in Long-Term Care Research

A research agenda for the science of actionable knowledge: Drawing from a review of the most misguided to the most enlightened claims in the science-policy interface literature

Linking science with action affords a prime opportunity to leverage greater societal impact from research and increase the use of evidence in decision-making. Success in these areas depends critically upon processes of producing and mobilizing knowledge, as well as supporting and making decisions. For decades, scholars have idealized and described these social processes in different ways, resulting in numerous assumptions that now variously guide engagements at the interface of science and society. We systematically catalog these assumptions based on prior research on the science-policy interface, and further distill them into a set of 26 claims. We then elicit expert perspectives (n = 16) about these claims to assess the extent to which they are accurate or merit further examination. Out of this process, we construct a research agenda to motivate future scientific research on actionable knowledge, prioritizing areas that experts identified as critical gaps in understanding of the science-society interface. The resulting agenda focuses on how to define success, support intermediaries, build trust, and evaluate the importance of consensus and its alternatives – all in the diverse contexts of science-society-decision-making interactions. We further raise questions about the centrality of knowledge in these interactions, discussing how a governance lens might be generative of efforts to support more equitable processes and outcomes. We offer these suggestions with hopes of furthering the science of actionable knowledge as a transdisciplinary area of inquiry.

Scientists’ attitudes about citizen science at Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites

A profound transformation, in recent decades, is promoting shifts in the ways ecological science is produced and shared; as such, ecologists are increasingly encouraged to engage in dialogues with multiple stakeholders and in transdisciplinary research. Among the different forms of public engagement, citizen science (CS) has significant potential to support science-society interactions with mutual benefits. While many studies have focused on the experience and motivations of CS volunteers, scarce literature investigating the perspectives of researchers is available. The main purpose of this paper is to better understand scientists’ attitudes about CS in the context of its potential to support outcomes that extent beyond more traditional ones focused on promoting science knowledge and interest. We surveyed the scientific community belonging to the International Long-Term Ecological Research (ILTER) network because ILTER is of interest to multiple stakeholders and occurs over long time scales. Via an online questionnaire, we asked ILTER scientists about their willingness to participate in different types of public engagement, their reasons for participating in CS, the associated barriers, and any impacts of these efforts on them. Our findings show that many ILTER scientists are open to participating in CS for a wide range of reasons; the dominant ones involve deeper public engagement and collaboration. The barriers of greatest concern of these respondents were the lack of institutional support to start and run a CS project and the difficulty of establishing long-term stable relationships with the public. They reported impacts of CS activities on how they pursue their work and acknowledged the benefit of opportunities to learn from the public. The emerging picture from this research is of a community willing and actively involved in many CS projects for both traditional reasons, such as data gathering and public education, and expanded reasons that activate a real two-way cooperation with the public. In the ILTER community, CS may thus become an opportunity to promote and develop partnerships with citizens, helping to advance the science-society interface and to rediscover and enhance the human and social dimension of the scientific work.

Role Perceptions in Climate Science Communication

ABSTRACT Climate science communication holds the potential to stimulate a renegotiation of the conventional roles in the science-society interface. As climate science is conducted within a context of uncertainty, disputed values, high-stakes, and urgency it promises to alter the demands placed on scientists, journalists, and citizens in the public discussion of the research. This study reviews the extant literature on the role perceptions among these three actors to examine how they perceive their own and each other's ideal roles. Based on a systematic literature search and a thematic reading, the examination shows that the normative role perceptions of climate scientists and climate journalists are relatively well described, while the ideal role of citizens in the discussion of climate science has received far less scholarly attention. Activism is shown to be a recurring theme in the discussion of the roles of climate scientists and climate journalists. The literature on the role of citizens is preoccupied with what level of scientific competence citizens ought to possess.

Participation brokers in the making: intermediaries taking up and embedding a new role at the science-society interface

Although research has been performed on participatory mechanisms in science and technology such as brokering, little seems written on intermediary organizations, e.g. science museums, taking up and embedding a participation brokerage role and systemic factors influencing these. This paper presents a qualitative case study in which six different intermediary organizations developed their participation brokerage role in a European RRI project. We demonstrate how structuring factors in the project context, the intermediary organization and the broader systemic context influenced the participation brokerage role take-up and embedding. Our findings yield implications for future capacity building endeavors among participation brokers in the making.

Notions of Climate-Change-Related Uncertainty Among Stakeholders in the Coastal Region of Krummhörn, East Frisia, Germany

Climate change impacts and adaptation measures are subject to various uncertainties. In communication and decision-making, these uncertainties need to be adequately considered. However, uncertainty is a conceptually multifaceted issue, a plethora of connotations and meanings surround the term, and most of that is not explicit but only implicit. We examined the notions of climate-change-related uncertainties actually held by stakeholders – from government and administration, water management, agriculture, tourism, nature conservation, education, and the insurance industry – in the coastal region of Krummhorn, East Frisia, Germany. We employed qualitative, semi-structured in-depth interviews, covering general as well as context-specific aspects of uncertainty. To analyze the interviews, we employed qualitative content analysis, using MAXQDA software and deductively and inductively formed codes. One main finding was the large heterogeneity in the responses: different stakeholders hold widely differing notions of uncertainty – across and even within sectors. Most stakeholders do not normally employ one of the established scientific concepts of uncertainty, but hold a normative perspective on uncertainty which is strongly based on subjective valuation. When dealing with objective information on the quantification of uncertainty, such as probabilities, most stakeholders are inconsistent. The particular perspective on uncertainty is strongly related to the specific topic. On a meta-level, we found that all stakeholders were unfamiliar with talking about uncertainty and had difficulties expressing their ideas in language. Overall, our study confirmed that uncertainty is a contested, pluralistic, and complex phenomenon, which is looked at from different perspectives by different stakeholders. We conclude that the communication of uncertainty at the science–society interface requires particular attention, as the notions of uncertainty held by stakeholders are not always in line with the established scientific concepts of uncertainty.

Refocusing the climate services lens: Introducing a framework for co-designing “transdisciplinary knowledge integration processes” to build climate resilience

This paper seeks to reconceptualize climate services in light of the prevailing inability of existing climate information to spur needed policy and action. We propose refocusing the climate services lens by moving away from a narrow, supply-driven emphasis on products. Instead, we advocate moving towards a process-centric approach defined by transdisciplinary collaboration that purposefully seeks to bring about fundamental, long-term benefits. Such benefits include increased human and institutional capacity, and the creation of relationships that are essential components of science-informed decision-making for climate adaptation and beyond. Work underpinning this paper consists of a review of existing climate services guidance, and analyses of a survey of climate services stakeholders, and a climate information co-production process case study in Lusaka, Zambia. We identify elements needed to support complex, real-world decision-making that many existing climate services fail to sufficiently consider. We respond by introducing a framework (Tandem), which consists of structured elements and practical, guiding questions informed by empirical analysis. To lay the foundation for both science-informed policy and policy-informed science, the Tandem framework puts forward guidance to achieve three goals: 1) to improve the ways in which all participants work together to purposefully design transdisciplinary knowledge integration processes (co-exploration and co-production processes that bring together different knowledge types across the science-society interface); 2) to co-explore decision-relevant needs for the co-production of integrated climate information (i.e., decision-relevant climate and non-climate information); and, 3) to increase individual and institutional capacities, collaboration, communication and networks that can translate this information into climate-resilient decision-making and action.

German forest management stakeholders at the science-society interface: Their views on problem definition, knowledge production and research utilization

Facing ever more pressing global environmental problems, applied sciences like forest research are expected to benefit society beyond the mere production of new knowledge. However, newly gained scientific knowledge is often not brought into practical application. While scholarly conceptualizations on how to design the science-society interface accordingly have been widely discussed in academia, little attention has been paid to the stakeholders’ views thereof.Hence, this paper systematically compares the core assumptions of "normal science“, political use of scientific knowledge and transdisciplinary research with statements from interviews with 21 forest management stakeholders about their experiences and views on knowledge production and exchange in German forest research along the lines of problem definition, knowledge production and research utilization.Our analysis finds that the assumptions of the conceptualization of political use of scientific knowledge have the most support through aligning stakeholder statements from the interviews, as stakeholders opt for a clear separation of science and practice in the phase of knowledge production. Furthermore, interviewees raised concerns about biased knowledge and strategic knowledge use in other actors on the one hand, while at the same time describing their own opportunistic use of knowledge. Fewer stakeholder statements aligned with the assumptions of transdisciplinary research, highlighting exchanges with other actor groups and mutual learning. But one key aspect of transdisciplinary research, the involvement of stakeholders in the problem definition, found a strong correspondence in the interviewees’ statements.Our explorative but systematic results demonstrate that no scholarly conceptualization is a panacea to maximize the effectiveness of the science-society interface. Rather, it illustrates how the clarification of scholarly and stakeholder conceptualizations can deliver levers to shape a more productive science-society interface in forest research.

Jointly Experimenting for Transformation? Shaping Real-World Laboratories by Comparing Them

Various experimental approaches of transformative research in real-world settings have emerged. Yet, similarities, differences, and specific contributions remain unclear. A characteristic-based comparison reveals complementarities and provides orientation.Real-world laboratories (RwLs, German Reallabore) belong to a family of increasingly popular experimental and transdisciplinary research approaches at the science-society interface. As these approaches in general, and RwLs in particular, often lack clear definitions of key characteristics and their operationalization, we make two contributions in this article. First, we identify five core characteristics of RwLs: contribution to transformation, experimental methods, transdisciplinary research mode, scalability and transferability of results, as well as scientific and societal learning and reflexivity. Second, we compare RwLs to similar research approaches according to the five characteristics. In this way, we provide an orientation on experimental and transdisciplinary research for societal transformations, and reveal the contributions of this type of research in supporting societal change. Our findings enable learning across the different approaches and highlight their complementarities, with a particular focus on RwLs.

Mapping a sustainable future: Community learning in dialogue at the science–society interface

In 2015, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) announced that the Science Year 2015 would focus on the “City of the Future”. It called for innovative projects from cities and communities in Germany dedicated to exploring future options and scenarios for sustainable development. Among the successful respondents was the city of Luneburg, located in the north of Germany, which was awarded funding to establish a community learning project to envision a sustainable future (“City of the Future Luneburg 2030+”). What made Luneburg’s approach unique was that the city itself initiated the project and invited a broad range of stakeholders to participate in a community learning process for sustainable development. The authors of this article use the project as a blueprint for sustainable city development. Presenting a reflexive case study, they report on the process and outcomes of the project and investigate community learning processes amongst different stakeholders as an opportunity for transformative social learning. They discuss outputs and outcomes (intended as well as unintended) in relation to the specific starting points of the project to provide a context-sensitive yet rich narrative of the case and to overcome typical criticisms of case studies in the field.

Enabling Transformative Research: Lessons from the Eastern and Southern Africa Partnership Programme (1999–2015)

World leaders at the 2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Summit in New York have re- confirmed the relevance of sustainability as the guiding paradigm in countering the development and climate crisis of the Anthropocene. Recent decades however, have been characterized by confusion, contestations, and arbitrariness in defining the nature and pathways of sustainable development. Humanity must urgently find ways to unlock the potential of the sustainability paradigm and organize a sustainability transforma- tion. An emerging sustainability science community has already established considerable consensus on essential features of transformative science and research. Sustainability scholars are providing growing evidence that an emancipatory and democratic construction of sustainable development and more equitable, deliberative, and democratized knowledge generation are pivotal in tackling sustainability challenges. These findings are further underpinned by experiences gained in the Eastern and Southern Africa Partnership Programme (1999–2015)—a rare case of a long-term, transnational, and transdisciplinary research en- deavour already completed. The programme fulfilled the dual role which is compulsory in transformative research: It generated contextualized knowledge and innovation at the science–society interface while simultaneously securing meaningful participation and Southern agency in a co-evolutionary process. This paper offers insight into the programme’s adaptive structure and implementation processes, which fostered deliberation, capacity development, and joint programme navigation benchmarked against local needs and broader sustainability demands. The ESAPP experience confirms that, if taken as the overarching frame of reference for all actors involved, the sustainability paradigm unfolds its integrative and transformative power. It enables sustainability-oriented actors from all scientific and practical fields to seek consilience between differing development and innovation paradigms and synchronize their development agendas and research frameworks on behalf of societal co-production of knowledge and innovation. Accordingly, the sustainability paradigm has the power to guide development and innovation policy, and practice out of the current confusion and ineffectiveness.

The futures of climate engineering

AbstractThis piece examines the need to interrogate the role of the conceptions of the future, as embedded in academic papers, policy documents, climate models, and other artifacts that serve as currencies of the science–society interface, in shaping scientific and policy agendas in climate engineering. Growing bodies of work on framings, metaphors, and models in the past decade serve as valuable starting points, but can benefit from integration with science and technology studies work on the sociology of expectations, imaginaries, and visions. Potentially valuable branches of work to come might be the anticipatory use of the future: the design of experimental spaces for exploring the future of an engineered climate in service of responsible research and innovation, and the integration of this work within the unfolding context of the Paris Agreement.

Fusing and disaggregating models, data and analysis tools for a dynamic science–society interface

Abstract Society requires rapid, most-probable predictions for specific and/or multifaceted questions related to environmental and geological science. In principle, models that encapsulate disciplinary knowledge are useful tools for making predictions and testing theory, but academic rewards favour disciplinary specialism and a proliferation of often insufficiently tested models. Decision makers have to assess the quality and robustness of predictions for complex environmental issues, and may prefer a model that performs accurately in a case study to a more parsimonious and generalizable model. Predictive ecosystem models tend to grow, as more processes are considered, even when a simpler model may be more appropriate and give results that are easier to interpret within a policy-relevant timeframe. Model fusion provides a practical way to combine knowledge from different disciplines, but can accelerate model growth. How then can we facilitate the evolution of useful predictive models? Coherent design is essential. When combining models it is often necessary to resolve overlapping scope, so tools need to allow for the disaggregation of model implementations as well as their fusion. Modelling software and integration frameworks can help resolve technical constraints, but to make models useful and used it is essential to involve stakeholders in their design and interpretation.

From the Ethics of Technology Towards an Ethics of Knowledge Policy & Knowledge Assessment

This working document of the services of the European Commission of which Dr. Rene von Schomberg is the author, reflects upon the difficulties of developing ethical frameworks for (new) technologies in the context of an ethics of responsibility. The principle shortcomings of contemporary ethical theory with regard to the challenges of scientific and technological development are discussed. A case is made for the need of an ethics of collective co-responsibility. Such an ethics should focus on the ethics of knowledge assessment and knowledge policy in the framework of deliberative procedures, rather than on the ethics of technologies as such. Furthermore, the document tries to identify the deliberative procedures and processes in the science-society interface in which ethical issues concerning new technologies are discussed. The documents ends with a preliminary and descriptive overview of how currently the issue of nanotechnology is addressed in deliberative frameworks at the European Level.

Regional Science-Society Interface within Global Environmental and Social Change towards Sustainability

This paper introduces the GEC (Global Environmental Change)-Japan/Asia platform as one of the attempts to enhance linkages and promote collaboration on transdisciplinarity approaches to global environmental and social change in Asia.This paper also attempts to contribute to discussions about new research directions and frameworks to promote science-society interface for sustainability research in Asia.

Research impacts and impact on research in biodiversity conservation: The influence of stakeholder engagement

In this paper we assess the level and modalities of stakeholder engagement in the 38 EU-funded FP6 biodiversity research projects and the impacts of doing research in a more participatory way on policy, society and science. We look both at impacts on the ‘research users’ as well as on the ‘producers’ of research outcomes. In particular, we explore how and when scientists make use of stakeholders’ input in the research process. To fully capture the complexity of the interactions we first develop a new typology of stakeholders and the roles they play. Our data indicate that half of the projects engaged mainly during the dissemination stage and not at critical stages of problem definition and methods selection. When fruitful interactions between science and society occur during the whole research process this often results in the foundation of innovative research programmes and transdisciplinary networks clustering around particular topics. This produces improved assessment of environmental change and effective policy proposals. We conclude that the complexity of the issues around biodiversity governance and the failure to halt biodiversity loss in Europe calls for more holistic and inclusive procedures of knowledge production at the science–society interface.

Science Meets Practice: A Winter School Offers New Perspectives

SAGUF is engaged in a winter school aimed at enabling PhD students to successfully work at the science-society interface. The winter school integrates theoretical reflection with practical experiences.

Teaching and Learning with Chemistry in Context

<span>Chemistry in Context is an issues-based curriculum model developed by the American Chemical Society for non-science majors at the college level. Through six editions, the goal has been to establish chemical principles on a “need-to-know” basis, always within a framework of significant issues at the science-society interface. Global warming, air and water quality, acid rain, energy choices, and genetic engineering are just some of the topics that our students explore, helped by appropriate use of web-based materials. Allowing these students the opportunity to develop the skills and knowledge necessary for becoming responsible citizens is essential if we are successfully to address global challenges. This paper will discuss features of this successful curricular approach and how it changes both students and faculty.</span>