Besides these developments at the level of science governance in Germany, there are a multitude of institutional initiatives and strategy developments underway. (3) Distribution of the researchers sex across age groups. Importance of Data Science. 0000040852 00000 n The SEP is used by research institutions to evaluate research units and focuses strongly on relevance for society as well as research quality [10, 11]. This supports many theoretical reflections about the epistemic conditions for societal impact and the different roles that disciplines occupy in society [36, 56, 87]. For example, if economic and technical impact were the sole basis for assessing societal impact, social sciences and humanities scholars would be discriminated against [6, 63]. It appears that you have an ad-blocker running. Again, we used our coding of the REF use cases as a framework and took a close look at educational offerings, consulting, events, PR, social media, and collaborations. Before the first large-scale impact agendas were implemented, scholars in STS critically examined the nature and role of science in society, drawing on novel concepts of academic knowledge creation such as Mode 2 [25, 26], academic capitalism [27], post-normal science [28] or Triple Helix [29]. especially in the following areas: Looks like youve clipped this slide to already. We designed a standardized instrument, consisting of six sections (A: sociodemographics, B: work context, C: knowledge transfer, D: teaching, E: research, F: general questions, G: personality). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0254006.g002. Researchers from applied universities are the primary users of advisory formats: 57% of researchers at applied universities have used advisory formats compared to 40% of researchers at independent institutes and only 26% of the researchers at universities. Expertise in sustainable livelihoods, food and nutrition security, mobile connectivity. However, the safety impact of different types of bus stops on vulnerable road users has received limited attention. The Role of Science in Society In broad terms, there are two possible goals for engaging the policy process and two primary strategies for achieving those goals. We designed a semi-convenience sample, which means that in principle any researcher with the link to the survey could participate. RQ1 was covered by a set of items (C1) addressing researchers attitudes towards societal impacti.e., their opinions regarding the importance of knowledge transfer as part of scientific activity and at their institutions, their opinions towards a stronger weighting of societal impact in research evaluation, and the performance of their institutions communication department in reaching relevant societal stakeholders. German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), Berlin, Germany, Affiliations the system by which a society provides its members with those things needed or desired . Think you'll never have to ask for help? by. We also contacted the German Research Associations (DFG) graduate schools. Data Availability: The data underlying this study are available on Kaggle (DOI: 10.34740/kaggle/dsv/2366092). The Impact of Technology on Society Description: Webster's New World Dictionary & Thesaurus . According to Bornmann, three main strands of societal impact can be distinguished: First, societal impact as a product (i.e., as an artifact that embodies scientific knowledge), second, societal impact as use (i.e., the adoption of academic knowledge by societal stakeholders), and third, societal impact as benefits (i.e., the effects of the use of research) [2]. Across all disciplinary groups, the respondents largely agree that public engagement is part of scientific activity (from 86% in the natural sciences, 91% in the humanities, to 93% in the social sciences). 0000056395 00000 n For more information about PLOS Subject Areas, click Resources, For example, technical innovation is a goal for 43% of male researchers and for 20% of female researchers. It should be noted that science is part of society and both the sciences and their publics have differing ideas about robustness and usefulness [32]. We found very little empirical research that looked at how researchers approach societal impact. In addition, there are two further points of criticism concerning the concept of societal impact: On the one hand, critics point to the inadequate representation of the complexity of science, for example, because impact logics of the natural sciences are used as a yardstick for evaluations [6, 57]. Here, we report on the largest section (C: knowledge transfer), which covers our three RQs, and use questions from sections A, B, and F for the explanatory analysis. Get started for FREE Continue. Science, technology and innovation must drive our pursuit of more equitable and sustainable development. 48 0 obj <> endobj xref 48 40 0000000016 00000 n The only transfer format that more than half of the respondents (68%) had used in the past are events (i.e., including public lectures, exhibitions, expert panel discussions). We differentiated between three dimensions of explanatory variables: By looking at these dimensions, we aimed to understand how these factors might influence the interaction between scientific and nonscientific actors in terms of the opinions researchers hold, the societal goals they pursue, and the formats they use to communicate about their research. The REF case studies are available in a public database (https://impact.ref.ac.uk/casestudies/). We show that most researchers regard societal engagement as part of their job and are generally in favor of impact evaluation. Later, entire lines of (communication) research addressed how the public deals with science, for example, the public understanding or awareness of science (PUS, PAwS), scientific literacy, or more recently the public engagement with science and technology (PEST) and the science of science communication [3033]. Science may be a boon if war can be abolished and democracy and cultural liberty preserved. This explains why, in this study, we focus on researchers and how they approach societal impact. Our results add to the ongoing scholarly discourse on societal impact by offering empirical evidence on a group that has received surprisingly little attention in the scholarly study of societal impactacademic researchers. With this particular dependent variable, we calculated a regression model (OLS) to analyze multivariate effects in more detail. Communication Data science is a critical component of modern-day businesses and organizations. Younger researchers use social media to communicate about their research more than older researchers, and male researchers particularly tend to use advisory formats. In this regard, interactions are deemed productive if encounters between researchers and societal stakeholders lead to knowledge that is academically sound and socially valuable [62, 64]. Additionally, we contacted the directors of each institute within the biggest German non-university research organizations (in the following shortened to independent institutes), i.e., the Max Planck Society, the Leibniz Association, the Helmholtz Association, and the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft. They are also in our air, our food, and in our water. ; 6 itemsRQ3). Special interests in Project Management, Consulting, and Sustainability. A steam turbine with the case opened, an example of energy technology. Our mission is to conduct in-depth research that leads to new ideas for solving problems facing society at the local, national and global level. This lesson will show the revolutionary impact of science in modern. Comparing applied and basic researchers, we noted that basic researchers hardly ever offer advisory formats (14% for basic researchers vs. 47% for applied researchers) or collaborations (17% for primarily basic researchers vs. 39% for primarily applied researchers). In general, we considered agreement as the last two answer categories of the scale (agree + strongly agree) and report on this. This crass . Yes Yes A topic that meets a societal need or promises to garner the attention of society is often more likely to be picked up as a research topic than an obscure question with little prospect for a larger impact. Regarding these institutional conditions, scholars have observed a certain decoupling of central communication infrastructures at institutions and the researchers working there [38, 39]. }, author={Muhammad Arham Parvez and Irfan Ahmad Rana and Adnan Nawaz and Hafiz Syed Hamid Arshad}, journal={Environmental science . Towards a knowledge based society - the sks mission - saturday 15th dec12, The role of science and technology in development, physics,techchnology,andsociety 090801144056-phpapp01, Why study science and technology in society, Science, Technology, & Society in the 20th century, Science And Technology Capacity And The Knowledge Society, Bi 140 science, technology and society module 1. We also find that young researchers (age 1829) are less keen on stimulating public discourse than older ones (37% in comparison to 65% for 3039-year-old researchers) or informing political decision-making (21% for young researchers compared to 48% for 4049-year-old researchers). These institutes are typically organized within the Max Planck Society, the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres, the Fraunhofer Society, and the Leibniz Association. Students are always looking for inspiring presentation topics for their academic assignments because employers look for people who have exc 0000003455 00000 n As far as researchers individual characteristics are concerned, it is notable that social media is used more by younger researchers, indicating that social media will likely become more important as a means of engagement. 3,136 passengers and 4,135 cyclists are observed at twelve typical bus stops in Nanjing, China. Few fields are expanding as much as nursing these days. While natural scientists chose goals in the spheres of environment and health as well as innovation and economic value creation, social scientists goals centred more on civic society and social justice as well as politics and public discourse. This is followed by educational offerings in schools and for civil society (43%), social media communication (38%), advisory formats (33%), and collaborations with nonscientific partners (33%). One reason for this discrepancy may be that researchers fear that evaluations will lead to additional work or that they will not adequately record their transfer activities [23, 60, 64]. Click here to review the details. They have been there for decades, we just didn't know it since our analytical capabilities were limited to the parts per billion level (ppb), a thousand times larger than parts per trillion (ppt). In this article, we introduce two technologies.