Researcher engagement in policy deemed societally beneficial yet unrewarded
Name
Singh_et_al-2019-Frontiers_in_Ecology_and_the_Environment.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.49 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
62c527822e911afcdaecff5a020a2143
Author(s)
Singh, Gerald G
Farjalla, Vinicius F
Chen, Bing
Pelling, Andrew E
Ceyhan, Elvan
Dominik, Martin
Alisic, Eva
Kerr, Jeremy
Selin, Noelle E
Bassioni, Ghada
Date Issued
July 2019
Journal
Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment
Publisher
Wiley
Citation
Singh, Gerald G. et al. "Researcher engagement in policy deemed societally beneficial yet unrewarded." Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 17, 7 (July 2019): 375-382 © 2019 The Authors.
Version
Final published version
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.
Subjects
Ecology
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Data, Systems, and Society
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1002/fee.2084
