An emerging literature suggests that when scientists interact with potential users of their knowledge throughout the research process, from problem formulation to result dissemination, they are best able to contribute solutions to real-world policy problems. Conducting "user-engaged" research, as these authors term it, ensures that the resulting knowledge is relevant to the problems at hand and produced on an appropriate timeline. Additionally, knowledge users are more likely to see the resulting information as credible, legitimate, and salient to their purposes. The level of interaction with knowledge users required by this approach would represent a substantial shift in the way most academic ecologists conduct their research, and it is not immediately clear the extent to which scientific institutions would permit these changes.
This project investigates the impacts on scientists' ability to conduct user-engaged research of two important but relatively poorly-understood types of science policies: university publication requirements that score authors based on publication in particular journals, and the editorial preferences of those journals. When researchers are strongly incentivized to publish in particular journals, the editorial boards of those journals may have significant influence over the types of research conducted by those researchers. This research uses a comparative ethnographic approach to understand the impacts of these policies across five national settings and will yield best practices in publication requirement policies for institutions that wish to encourage user-engaged ecology research.
Broader Impacts: The knowledge generated by this project helps federal and state science-funding organizations, universities, journal editorial boards, and other institutions and individuals create incentives such that researchers are able to conduct user-engaged science, when appropriate. This work contributes to the effective use of public research money toward the goals for which it is allocated. Additionally, this project trains undergraduate researchers in document analysis, translation, semi-structured interviewing, and related research methods, thus preparing them for advanced science policy scholarship.
