The Impact of the Social Sciences: How Academics and Their
                    Research Make a Difference

Bastow, Simon; Dunleavy, Patrick; Tinkler, Jane

doi:10.4135/9781473921511

Cited by 194 publications

(189 citation statements)

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“…Research results are often behind 'paywalls' or 'coded' for the academic community in jargon that excludes policymakers (Bastow et al 2013). If policymakers do not have access to research, they are not able to make evidence-informed decisions.…”

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confidence: 99%

Knowledge management for policy impact: the case of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre

et al. 2018

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The European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) employs over 2000 scientists and seeks to maximise the value and impact of research in the EU policy process. To that end, its Knowledge management for policy (KMP) initiative synthesised the insights of a large amount of interdisciplinary work on the 'evidence-policy interface' to promote a new skills and training agenda. It developed this training initially for Commission staff, but many of its insights are relevant to organisations which try to combine research, policymaking, management, and communication skills to improve the value and use of research in policy. We recommend that such organisations should develop teams of researchers, policymakers, and 'knowledge brokers' to produce eight key practices: (1) research synthesis, to generate 'state of the art' knowledge on a policy problem; (2) management of expert communities, to maximise collaboration; (3) understanding policymaking, to know when and how to present evidence; (4) interpersonal skills, to focus on relationships and interaction; (5) engagement, to include citizens and stakeholders; (6) effective communication of knowledge; (7) monitoring and evaluation, to identify the impact of evidence on policy; and (8) policy advice, to know how to present knowledge effectively and ethically. No one possesses all skills relevant to all these practices. Rather, we recommend that organisations at the evidence-policy interface produce teams of people with different backgrounds, perspectives, and complementary skills.

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confidence: 99%

Knowledge management for policy impact: the case of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre

et al. 2018

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“…A full examination of how and why the audiences for development studies has diversified and changed lies beyond the scope of this paper. The organisational traditions and parallel dialogues described here provides one insight on this phenomenon, yet a more comprehensive discussion would touch upon the use (and misuse) of social sciences more broadly (see Bastow, Dunleavy, and Tinkler 2014). 13.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More recent performance assessment schemes do consider the "impact" of a scholar's work on real-world policy and practice, yet these measures do not yet weigh as heavily as criteria of academic quality or research excellence. There are well-known hazards of assessing the impact of social sciences (Bastow, Dunleavy, and Tinkler 2014), which are especially acute in development studies at a time when the opportunities to work in donor agencies or inform development practice may be eroding.…”

Section: Career Incentivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The state of development studies: origins, evolution and prospects

Currie‐Alder¹

2016

Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne d'ét

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“…The lack of a standard that requires writers to include original references penalizes those who attend to the scientific rigor of reading them. Since the quality and validity of social sciences has improved significantly [67,68], the importance of the social sciences on enhancing science & research should, from my perspective, not be neglected nor be judged by citation tradition alone.…”

Section: Non-receptive Reading Reflection and Ignorancementioning

confidence: 99%

Science belongs to no one—and to everyone

Brücher

2017

4open

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The Impact of the Social Sciences: How Academics and Their Research Make a Difference

Cited by 194 publications

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Knowledge management for policy impact: the case of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre

Knowledge management for policy impact: the case of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre

The state of development studies: origins, evolution and prospects

Science belongs to no one—and to everyone

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