Trade literature provides a path from research to practice

Abstract

The work of professionals practicing in the community provides a pathway for knowledge advances to reach practice. Yet outside of medicine, little attention has been paid to this phenomenon. Similarly, professions are defined by bodies of knowledge yet studies of professions do not attend to the dynamic relationship between professionals and the ever advancing frontiers of knowledge. In this paper, we delineate the pathway from research to practice as evidenced in trade literature. Our analysis is based on bibliometric and survey data. We find evidence that trade literature is informed by research in references to research papers found in trade periodicals, and trade press articles authored by researchers. Professionals feed back their advances in practice to the community by writing articles for trade publications, and sometimes these are articles are cited by scholarly journal articles, thus the exchange of knowledge is bi-directional to a certain extent. Our survey established that many professionals read trade literature because the contents are relevant to their practice. They trust, with caveats, the material they read but trust more in material with an obvious connection to public sector research. Professionals can often point to ways their practice has improved due to something they read in a trade periodical. Thus the trade literature has institutionalized a mechanism of indirect linkage between research and practice. Indexing trade periodicals could provide a valuable resource for those wishing to make visible the connection between research and practice.