Perspectives on institutional valuing and support for academic and translational outputs in Japan and Australia

Abstract

There is increasing expectation that research be communicated broadly to share knowledge across industry, professional, governmental, and public spheres. Scholarly publishers can benefit from the sharing of research beyond academia since the potential for societal impact encourages further support from both industry and governmental funders. This paper draws on qualitative in‐depth interview data from Australian‐ and Japanese‐based early career researchers (ECRs) to investigate how higher education institutions support the development of diverse communication skills needed by ECRs to effectively share their research both in academia and beyond. We found that sharing research for academic and other diverse audiences is often perceived as valued but may not always be supported. Output valuing was communicated in performance management, but there were compelling differences between the two nations, with Japanese‐based ECRs reporting a stronger expectation of research outputs for non‐academic audiences than their Australian counterparts. There were also indications that institutional support for both academic and translational outputs may change in response to nations' shifting research priorities.

Traversing the academic ladder as an early career researcher in earth and environmental sciences

“…Perceived prestige is pervasive in academia: particular (groups of) institutions, publishing in specific journals, and securing large research grants seem to carry huge weight (Sutherland, 2017;Merga and Mason, 2021;Raja and Dunne, 2021). We interpret this as evidence that ECRs are putting more emphasis on work-life balance and that ECR priorities continue to shift away from the established view of what constitutes and how to forge a successful career in academia, which usually involves judgement against a set of performative metrics (Sutherland, 2017).…”

The academic labour of knowledge mobilization: What scholarly publishers need to know

“…Furthermore, KMb is an area in which I have conducted research in recent times (e.g. Merga & Mason, 2020b). I am motivated to keep sharing my research as far as feasible around the facets of my workload that are valued by universities, for audiences who may use my work to build on their knowledge, inform professional practice and develop or revise educational policies and interventions, and I am also interested in helping others to do this effectively.…”

“…Even though it may seem to be in their best interests, academics may actively resist the emergence of growing expectations of research impact, as they may already struggle with their existing overladen and complex workloads and accountabilities, making the appearance of additional requirements appended to the workload without support or consideration of the labour involved potentially overwhelming (Bliemel & Zipparo, 2020). Universities may still focus on supporting the production of scholarly outputs, poorly facilitating the production of translational outputs (Merga & Mason, 2020b). Furthermore, these efforts may not be recognized, as ‘even universities which explicitly include “public scholarship” in their tenure and promotion guidelines still emphasize traditional forms of scholarship over public impact’, despite the fact that ‘Twitter accounts, YouTube videos, or free, publicly available white papers may reach far more people, and have much more impact, than any type of scholarly output, no matter how rigorous’ (Marwick, 2020, p. 609).…”

The role of university Knowledge Transfer Offices: Not just commercialize research outputs!

“…El desempeño organizacional en IES cobra relevancia debido al papel fundamental que estas organizaciones tienen en la formación de capital humano, el cual sustenta el desarrollo económico de los países. Además, el desempeño en IES varía con base en el apoyo que las naciones brinden al fortalecimiento de la educación superior (Merga & Mason, 2021). Por ende, la medición de desempeño incrementa la competencia entre IES públicas y privadas; donde el desempeño puede verse limitado por la presión 100 Marco analítico del capital intelectual y su contribución al fortalecimiento de ventajas competitivas: caso de estudio Facultad de Minas y Facultad de Ciencias-Universidad Nacionalgubernamental para demostrar rendimiento y transparencia en rendición de cuentas a la sociedad (Galleguillos-Cortés et al, 2018).…”