Productive interactions in basic research an enquiry into impact pathways at the DESY synchrotron

In recent years, the productive interactions approach has gained increasing prominence as a foundation for studying the socioeconomic impact of science. So far, however, it has been deployed primarily as a heuristic for analyses in the context of social sciences research at universities. The majority of impact studies of basic research infrastructures, in contrast, have remained focused on these facilities' long-term contribution to science, their role as economic agents or the learning effects induced through their collaboration with suppliers. This paper demonstrates that the array of productive interactions at basic research infrastructures can be substantially wider. First, it identifies a number of productive interactions relevant for this context based on workshops with diverse infrastructures' managements. Beyond qualified procurement, these include on-demand experiments, scientific collaboration with industrial partners, the provision of datasets, the development of technical equipment and external communication. Second, our survey of the DESY synchrotron's users reveals that productive interactions with external partners are prevalent and tend to be embedded in particular project types. Among such projects, we find those most associated with concrete impact that involve external partners in a formal manner.