The production of scientific and societal value in research evaluation: a review of societal impact assessment methods

Merit, Expertise and Measuremen

How academic researchers select collaborative research projects: a choice experiment

Merit, Expertise and Measuremen

What can research organizations learn from their spin-off companies?: Six case studies in the water sector

Merit, Expertise and Measuremen

Funding for few, anticipation among all: effects of excellence funding on academic research groups

Merit, Expertise and Measuremen

Onderzoeksprogramma's met een missie: lessen voor opgavegericht innovatiebeleid

Merit, Expertise and Measuremen

Science and the struggle for relevance

This thesis deals with struggles for relevance of university researchers, their efforts to make their work correspond with ruling standards of relevance and to influence these standards. Its general research question is: How to understand changes in the struggle for relevance of Dutch academic researchers in chemistry, biology and agricultural science, in the period 1975-2005? With this study of the relevance of science I aim to contribute to the understanding of transformations in the knowledge infrastructure, as discussed in a large and expanding literature using concepts like Mode 2 knowledge production, post-academic science and the Triple Helix of university-government-industry relationships. A state-of-the-art of this literature is provided in Chapter 2. My theoretical starting point is a distinction between the agency of scientists and the structures patterning their behavior. In this thesis I develop and use three central concepts to analyze struggles for relevance: the credibility cycle, the science-society contract, and the research system. This research follows a case study approach and deals with chemistry, biology and agricultural science in the Netherlands. Within each case I focus in particular on two or three fields representing the breadth of the discipline in terms of possible stakeholders. Data have been drawn from in-depth interviews with 47 academic researchers, and with a number scholarly experts and representatives of various organizations in the research system. Moreover I have analyzed a selection of governmental policy documents, reports and strategic plans of research councils, foresight studies, evaluations and other important publications about the disciplines. In the period 1975-2005, three general trends were visible in the struggles for relevance of Dutch academic researchers in chemistry, biology and agricultural science: the intensification of the struggle for relevance during the collection of data, the decreasing value of practical applications as a source of recognition, and the intensification of the struggle for relevance in the context of funding acquisition. However, the changes also varied across scientific fields, regarding the intensity of stakeholder interactions during data collection, the precise value of practical applications as a source of recognition, the actual influence of stakeholders on the research agenda, and the relationship between practical applications and scientific productivity. The changes observed can be understood as effects of structural changes, in particular the diversification of funding, the rise of performance evaluations, and changing views on the societal position of the university, in combination with characteristics of scientific fields and their stakeholders. My findings have two implications for the debate about changing science systems. First, this study shows that the increasing pressure for productivity, as measured in bibliometric terms, can counteract the pressure for practical utility. Second, my work indicates that the debate deserves a further differentiation, as the dynamics of science vary much more across scientific fields than most literature suggests

Alleen ga je snel, samen kom je verder

Oratie uitgesproken door Prof. dr. Laurens Hessels bij de aanvaarding van het ambt van bijzonder hoogleraar Maatschappelijke waarde van wetenschap aan de Universiteit Leiden op vrijdag 24 juni 2022</p

The mixed blessing of Mode 2 knowledge production

The notion of Mode 2 knowledge production (Gibbons et al. 1994, Nowotny et al. 2001) already has a remarkable history. It was launched fifteen years ago to capture the ongoing changes in the world of science, science policy and the knowledge economy at large. While it is not the only attempt to make sense of the change, it definitively is the most popular. Since its publication in 1994, ‘The New Production of Knowledge’ (Gibbons et al. 1994), which has coined the notions of Mode 1 and Mode 2, has received almost 1900 citations in scientific journals . It is a blessing that it has helped both scholars and policymakers to get a grip on the profound changes going on in contemporary science systems. But the concept of Mode 2 knowledge production also proved to be a mixed blessing by creating confusion and by conflating interrelated yet independent trends