Building university-based boundary organisations that facilitate impacts on environmental policy and practice

Abstract

Responding to modern day environmental challenges for societal well-being and prosperity necessitates the integration of science into policy and practice. This has spurred the development of novel institutional structures among research organisations aimed at enhancing the impact of environmental science on policy and practice. However, such initiatives are seldom evaluated and even in cases where evaluations are undertaken, the results are rarely made publicly available. As such there is very little empirically grounded guidance available to inform other organisations in this regard. To help address this, the aim of this study is to evaluate the Baltic Eye Project at Stockholm University–a unique team consisting of researchers from different fields, science communicators, journalists and policy analysts–working collectively to support evidence-informed decision-making relating to the sustainable management of the Baltic Sea environment. Specifically, through qualitative interviews, we (1) identify the impacts achieved by the Baltic Eye Project; (2) understand the challenges and barriers experienced throughout the Baltic Eye Project; and (3) highlight the key features that are needed within research organisations to enhance the impact of science on policy and practice. Results show that despite only operating for three years, the Baltic Eye Project has achieved demonstrable impacts on a range of levels: impacts on policy and practice, impacts to individuals working within the organisation and impacts to the broader University. We also identify a range of barriers that have limited impacts to date, such as a lack of clear goals at the establishment of the Baltic Eye Project and existing metrics of academic impact (e.g. number of publications). Finally, based on the experiences of employees at the Baltic Eye Project, we identify the key organisational, individual, financial, material, practical, political, and social features of university-based boundary organisations that have impact on policy and practice. In doing so this paper provides empirically-derived guidance to help other research organisations increase their capacity to achieve tangible impacts on environmental policy and practice.

Models to build capacity for African science centres and science communication: needs and assets

“…), to ensure that emerging themes were valid and relevant, the evolving interpretations were continually verified against the raw data from which they were derived [following previous studies, e.g. Cvitanovic et al, 2018]. Categories and descriptions were then shared with all authors for consideration, review and refinement, however, formal interrater reliability processes were not conducted due to the limited research experience of some authors.…”

Five Organizational Features That Enable Successful Interdisciplinary Marine Research

“…All interviews were guided by a set of open-ended questions (e.g., an interview guide) that were designed to explore the perceptions of participants against the study objectives (full interview guide at Supplementary Material). The interview guide itself was developed following grounded theory guidelines (Charmaz and Belgrave, 2012) and by drawing on previous efforts to characterize principles of success (i.e., Reed et al, 2014;Cvitanovic et al, 2018a;Kelly et al, 2019), but adapted to suit the specific aims of this study. As such, the interview guide focused on four key areas.…”

“…While such studies have helped to understand how best to cultivate individual researchers that are capable of engaging effectively within interdisciplinary research processes, there is very little empirically derived guidance for how to build institutional capacity and structures that support interdisciplinary research, particularly for research organizations focused on developing solutions to marine sustainability challenges (Cvitanovic et al, 2020). The identification of core principles to guide such efforts can be achieved through the evaluation of existing interdisciplinary efforts, which in turn can help generate guidance for other research organizations seeking to enhance their interdisciplinary capabilities (e.g., Cvitanovic et al, 2018a).…”

Navigating spaces between conservation research and practice: Are we making progress?

“…where it is not done well (see Oliver, Kothari, & Mays, 2019;Sutherland, Shackelford, & Rose, 2017;Rose et al, 2019). There has also been progress with emerging boundary organisations and knowledge brokers working in the spaces between research and practice, while aligning the work of research-and practice-led institutions (Cvitanovic, Löf, Norström, & Reed, 2018;Posner & Cvitanovic, 2019;Roux et al, 2017). However, based on the viewpoints expressed at the 2019 workshop such approaches are still uncommon in the conservation sector.…”