Laurens K. Hessels’s research while affiliated with Leiden University and other places

Despite the increasing recognition for the scientific and societal potential of interdisciplinary research, selection committees struggle with the evaluation of interdisciplinary proposals. Interdisciplinary proposals include a wider range of theories and methods, involve a more diverse team, pose a higher level of uncertainty, and their evaluation requires expertise from multiple disciplines. In this study, we investigate the possibility to support the evaluation of interdisciplinary research proposals with measures of interdisciplinary research quality. Based on the literature, we curated a set of qualitative criteria and bibliometric indicators. Subsequently, we examined their feasibility using interviews with interdisciplinary researchers and a re-assessment session of a grant-allocation procedure. In the re-assessment session members of an original evaluation panel assessed four original research proposals again, but now supported with our measures. This study confirmed the potential of qualitative criteria to assess the interdisciplinarity or research proposals. These indicators helped to make explicit what different people mean with interdisciplinary research, which improved the quality of the discussions and decision-making. The utility of bibliometric indicators turned out to be limited, due to technical limitations and concerns about unintended side effects.

Distinguishing between research collaboration, consultancy, dissemination, and commercialization of research results, this paper analyses the determinants of researchers’ societal engagement. The analytical framework integrates societal engagement as part of the credibility cycle. Several variables extend previous findings on determinants and mechanisms—herein scientific recognition and funding sources. A novel method to investigate the relationship between scientific recognition and societal engagement is explored. Drawing on a large-scale survey of European-based researchers in physics, cardiology, and economics, we find that several factors are associated with different modes of societal engagement in complex and intersecting ways. Scientific recognition is positively associated with research collaboration and dissemination, while organizational seniority is associated with all modes except for research collaboration with non-scientific actors. Female gender is positively associated with dissemination and external funding sources are positively associated will all. The findings intersect with differences in the three research fields.

In recent times, there has been a surge of impact-oriented, transdisciplinary research programmes and projects integrating multiple disciplines, types of knowledge and practices. An essential element often mentioned in the literature to improve the performance of these programmes and support impact delivery is continuous reflection and learning via evaluation. We argue that because a standard format for organizing transdisciplinary research does not exist, tailor-made evaluation approaches designed around the specificities of each programme are needed. The existing evaluation literature provides useful building blocks that can be integrated and adapted to specific transdisciplinary research contexts. In this article, we develop the valorization cycle and apply it to evaluate a transdisciplinary research programme in the water sector. The building blocks of our approach are: understanding of valorization as a cyclical process; theory of change as a logic model to structure the evaluation; productive interactions as a process indicator articulated in learning outcomes (cognitive, relational, and strategic); and impact pathways as narratives to explain impact dynamics. Our framework is based both on research evaluation and learning literature and on our personal experience in the evaluation of transdisciplinary research. The evaluation of the programme showed how the valorization cycle can point to different learning outcomes across the research process that are conducive to impact, and provided useful insights to the programme managers to adjust the programme. The principle of tailoring an evaluation approach to the specificities of the programme evaluated using building blocks from the literature will be applicable in other transdisciplinary contexts too.

Although many studies have been conducted on the drivers of and barriers to research collaborations, current literature provides limited insights into the ways in which individual researchers choose to engage in different collaborative projects. Using a choice experiment, we studied the factors that drive this choice using a representative sample of 3145 researchers from Western Europe and North America who publish in English. We find that for most researchers, the expected publication of research in scientific journals deriving from a project is the most decisive factor driving their collaboration choices. Moreover, most respondents prefer to collaborate with other partners than industry. However, different factors’ influence varies across groups of researchers. These groups are characterised as going for the ‘puzzle’ (60% of the sample), the ‘ribbon’ (33%) or the ‘gold’ (8%), i.e., primarily oriented toward intellectual goals, recognition or money, respectively. This heterogeneity shows that a combination of interventions will be required for governments aiming to promote university–industry collaborations.

Process-oriented transdisciplinary research is generally seen as a promising approach to facilitate sustainability transitions. This type of research requires new participatory roles for researchers. These new roles may conflict with traditional, more academic roles that researchers often maintain next to their new roles. Using the Dutch transdisciplinary Knowledge-Action Programme on Water (KAP Water) as a case study, we highlight tensions that researchers adopting these new roles experience. We have observed both practical and more fundamental tensions between roles of researchers in process-oriented sustainability research. In particular, it proved difficult to combine more engaged roles, where researchers are involved in dialogues for change, with knowledge-oriented roles, where researchers focus on knowledge provision and are further removed from ‘real-world action’. Tensions arise from three sources: (1) researchers’ self-perception and expectations; (2) expectations from transdisciplinary partners, funders and researchers’ home institutions; and (3) societal convictions about what scientific knowledge is and how it should be developed. This paper contributes to the literature by enhancing the understanding of the interactions and tensions between the roles of researchers in transdisciplinary research.

Over the past two decades, several methods have been developed to evaluate the societal impact of research. Compared to the practical development of the field, the conceptual development is relatively weak. This review article contributes to the latter by elucidating the theoretical aspects of the dominant methods for evaluating societal impact of research, in particular, their presuppositions about the relationship between scientific and societal value of research. We analyse 10 approaches to the assessment of the societal impact of research from a constructivist perspective. The methods represent different understandings of knowledge exchange, which can be understood in terms of linear, cyclical, and co-production models. In addition, the evaluation methods use a variety of concepts for the societal value of research, which suggest different relationships with scientific value. While some methods rely on a clear and explicit distinction between the two types of value, other methods, in particular Evaluative Inquiry, ASIRPA, Contribution Mapping, Public Value Mapping, and SIAMPI, consider the mechanisms for producing societal value integral to the research process. We conclude that evaluation methods must balance between demarcating societal value as a separate performance indicator for practical purposes and doing justice to the (constructivist) science studies’ findings about the integration of scientific and societal value of research. Our analytic comparison of assessment methods can assist research evaluators in the conscious and responsible selection of an approach that fits with the object under evaluation. As evaluation actively shapes knowledge production, it is important not to use oversimplified concepts of societal value.

In spite of the growing literature about excellence funding in science, we know relatively little about its implications for academic research practices. This article compares organizational and epistemic effects of excellence funding across four disciplinary fields, based on in-depth case studies of four research groups in combination with twelve reference groups. In spite of the highly selective nature of excellence funding, all groups employ dedicated strategies to maximize their chances of acquiring it, which we call strategic anticipation. The groups with ample excellence funding acquire a relatively autonomous position within their organization. While the epistemic characteristics of the four fields shape how excellence funding can be used, we find that in all fields there is an increase in epistemic autonomy. However, in fields with more individual research practices a longer time horizon for grants, beyond the usual 5 years, would fit better with the research process.

Spin-off companies are generally considered a promising vehicle for developing academic knowledge into products that are ready for the market. In this paper the authors explore under what circumstances spin-off companies can serve as a source of knowledge for the research organization from which they originate. The paper brings together literature from different academic fields to construct an analytical framework for investigating knowledge feedback mechanisms between spin-off companies and their parent research organizations. The authors illustrate the application of this framework in six case studies of parent–spin-off couples in the water technology sector. These case studies show that the interaction with spin-off companies can yield important cognitive benefits for the academic research process, such as an improvement of the research agenda and new insights about the practical operation of theoretical models and technologies. These benefits were facilitated mainly by staff exchange, collaborative research and personal contacts.

Knowledge co-production, a mode of research including contributions both from academic and non-academic actors, is a promising approach for climate adaptation research in order to produce knowledge that supports the development of local and regional adaptation policies. However, such a local and practical focus may be ill-aligned with the global ambitions of academic participants. The differences between performance criteria of academic and non-academic partners make knowledge co-production unlikely to emerge and survive without protection. This paper aims to understand how different participants in knowledge co-production for climate adaptation can be protected from the norms, values, and performance criteria of their own respective organizations and communities. We found that combinations of shielding (moderating pressures from the selection environment), nurturing (supporting knowledge development), and empowerment (increasing influence over the contexts) activities lead to more successful knowledge co-production. Moreover, our analysis shows that there is no silver bullet for the protection of knowledge co-production. An effective protection strategy should be tailored to the research problem and the social network of a given program.

This paper aims to explore disciplinary variation in valuation practices by comparing the way research groups accumulate credibility across four epistemic cultures. Our analysis is based on case studies of four high-performing research groups representing very different epistemic cultures in humanities, social sciences, geosciences and mathematics. In each case we interviewed about ten researchers, analyzed relevant documents and observed a couple of meetings. In all four cases we found a cyclical process of accumulating credibility. At the same time, we found significant differences in the manifestation of the six main resources that are part of the cycle, the mechanisms of conversion between these resources, the overall structure and the average speed of the credibility cycle. The different ways in which the groups use data and produce arguments affect the whole cycle of accumulating credibility. In some cultures, journal publications are the main source of recognition, but in others one can earn significant amounts of recognition for conference contributions or service to the academic community. Moreover, the collaboration practices in the respective fields strongly influence the connection between arguments and publications. In cultures where teams of researchers collaboratively produce arguments, it is more strongly embedded in the process of writing publications. We conclude that the credibility cycle can only be used as an analytical tool to explain the behavior of researchers or research groups when taking differences across epistemic cultures into account.