IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v127y2022i12d10.1007_s11192-022-04374-x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Societal impact of university research in the written press: media attention in the context of SIUR and the open science agenda among social scientists in Flanders, Belgium

Author

Listed:
  • Hans Jonker

    (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)

  • Florian Vanlee

    (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)

  • Walter Ysebaert

    (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)

Abstract

Transferring scientific knowledge to non-academic audiences is an essential aspect of the open science agenda, which calls for scholars to pursue a popularization of their research. Accordingly, purposefully introducing scientific insights to the public at large is almost univocally deemed commendable. Indeed, in today’s models of research evaluation, the objects and activities considered are being extended beyond peer-reviewed journal articles to include non-scholarly popular communication. Although altmetrics offer one instrumental way to count some interactions with lay audiences, their reliance on social media makes them susceptible to manipulation, and mostly reflect circulation among niche audiences. In comparison, attention from non-scholarly media like newspapers and magazines seems a more relevant pathway to effectuate societal impact, due to its recognition in qualitative assessment tools and its broad, societal reach. Based on a case study of social scientists’ attention by newspapers and magazines in Flanders (northern Dutch-speaking region of Belgium) in 2019, this paper highlights that frequent participation in the public debate is reserved for high-status researchers only. Results show highly skewed media appearance patterns in both career position and gender, as eight male professors accounted for almost half of all 2019 media attention for social scientists. Because media attention is highly subject-dependent moreover, certain disciplines and fields offer easier pathways to popularization in media than others. Both the open science agenda and research assessment models value presence of researchers in popular media, adding written press attention to existing evaluation assessments however would disproportionately disadvantage early career researchers and exacerbate existing inequalities in academia.

Suggested Citation

  • Hans Jonker & Florian Vanlee & Walter Ysebaert, 2022. "Societal impact of university research in the written press: media attention in the context of SIUR and the open science agenda among social scientists in Flanders, Belgium," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(12), pages 7289-7306, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:127:y:2022:i:12:d:10.1007_s11192-022-04374-x
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-022-04374-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-022-04374-x
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11192-022-04374-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lutz Bornmann, 2013. "What is societal impact of research and how can it be assessed? a literature survey," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(2), pages 217-233, February.
    2. Stefan de Jong & Katharine Barker & Deborah Cox & Thordis Sveinsdottir & Peter Van den Besselaar, 2014. "Understanding societal impact through productive interactions: ICT research as a case," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 23(2), pages 89-102.
    3. Bornmann, Lutz & Haunschild, Robin & Adams, Jonathan, 2019. "Do altmetrics assess societal impact in a comparable way to case studies? An empirical test of the convergent validity of altmetrics based on data from the UK research excellence framework (REF)," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 325-340.
    4. Gunnar Sivertsen & Ingeborg Meijer, 2020. "Normal versus extraordinary societal impact: how to understand, evaluate, and improve research activities in their relations to society?," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 29(1), pages 66-70.
    5. Mingers, John & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2015. "A review of theory and practice in scientometrics," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 246(1), pages 1-19.
    6. Mojisola Erdt & Aarthy Nagarajan & Sei-Ching Joanna Sin & Yin-Leng Theng, 2016. "Altmetrics: an analysis of the state-of-the-art in measuring research impact on social media," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 1117-1166, November.
    7. Virginia Gewin, 2016. "Data sharing: An open mind on open data," Nature, Nature, vol. 529(7584), pages 117-119, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Daniela De Filippo & Fernanda Morillo & Borja González-Albo, 2023. "Measuring the Impact and Influence of Scientific Activity in the Humanities and Social Sciences," Publications, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-17, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zhang, Lin & Sivertsen, Gunnar & Du, Huiying & HUANG, Ying & Glänzel, Wolfgang, 2021. "Gender differences in the aims and impacts of research," SocArXiv 9n347, Center for Open Science.
    2. Lin Zhang & Gunnar Sivertsen & Huiying Du & Ying Huang & Wolfgang Glänzel, 2021. "Gender differences in the aims and impacts of research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(11), pages 8861-8886, November.
    3. Dotti, Nicola Francesco & Walczyk, Julia, 2022. "What is the societal impact of university research? A policy-oriented review to map approaches, identify monitoring methods and success factors," Evaluation and Program Planning, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    4. Jianhua Hou & Xiucai Yang & Yang Zhang, 2023. "The effect of social media knowledge cascade: an analysis of scientific papers diffusion," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(9), pages 5169-5195, September.
    5. Sergio Copiello, 2019. "Research Interest: another undisclosed (and redundant) algorithm by ResearchGate," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(1), pages 351-360, July.
    6. Alba Viana Lora & Marta Gemma Nel-lo Andreu, 2020. "Alternative Metrics for Assessing the Social Impact of Tourism Research," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(10), pages 1-12, May.
    7. Jorrit P Smit & Laurens K Hessels, 2021. "The production of scientific and societal value in research evaluation: a review of societal impact assessment methods [Systems Thinking, Knowledge and Action: Towards Better Models and Methods]," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 30(3), pages 323-335.
    8. Lin Zhang & Zhenyu Gou & Zhichao Fang & Gunnar Sivertsen & Ying Huang, 2023. "Who tweets scientific publications? A large‐scale study of tweeting audiences in all areas of research," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 74(13), pages 1485-1497, December.
    9. Hou, Jianhua & Yang, Xiucai, 2020. "Social media-based sleeping beauties: Defining, identifying and features," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(2).
    10. Jonathan P. Doh & Lorraine Eden & Anne S. Tsui & Srilata Zaheer, 2023. "Developing international business scholarship for global societal impact," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 54(5), pages 757-767, July.
    11. Ying Guo & Xiantao Xiao, 2022. "Author-level altmetrics for the evaluation of Chinese scholars," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(2), pages 973-990, February.
    12. Matt, M. & Colinet, L. & Gaunand, A. & Joly, P.B., 2015. "A typology of impact pathways generated by a public agricultural research organization," Working Papers 2015-03, Grenoble Applied Economics Laboratory (GAEL).
    13. Helka Kalliomäki & Sampo Ruoppila & Jenni Airaksinen, 2021. "It takes two to tango: Examining productive interactions in urban research collaboration [Generating Research Questions through Problematization]," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 30(4), pages 529-539.
    14. Junwen Luo & Lai Ma & Kalpana Shankar, 2021. "Does the inclusion of non-academic reviewers make any difference for grant impact panels? [Understanding the Long Term Impact of the Framework Programme, European Policy Evaluation Consortium (EPEC," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 48(6), pages 763-775.
    15. Rossi, Federica & De Silva, Muthu & Pavone, Pasquale & Rosli, Ainurul & Yip, Nick K.T., 2024. "Proximity and impact of university-industry collaborations. A topic detection analysis of impact reports," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    16. Gunnar Sivertsen & Ingeborg Meijer, 2020. "Normal versus extraordinary societal impact: how to understand, evaluate, and improve research activities in their relations to society?," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 29(1), pages 66-70.
    17. Peter T. Jacobs & Alexis Habiyaremye & Bhekiwe Fakudze & Kgabo Ramoroka & Siyanda Jonas, 2019. "Producing Knowledge to Raise Rural Living Standards: How Universities Connect with Resource-Poor Municipalities in South Africa," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 31(4), pages 881-901, September.
    18. Hashem Atapour & Robabeh Maddahi & Rasoul Zavaraqi, 2024. "Policy citations of scientometric articles: an altmetric study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 129(7), pages 4423-4436, July.
    19. Xie, Qing & Wang, Jiamin & Kim, Giyeong & Lee, Soobin & Song, Min, 2021. "A sensitivity analysis of factors influential to the popularity of shared data in data repositories," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3).
    20. Kroll, Henning & Hansmeier, Hendrik & Hufnagl, Miriam, 2022. "Productive interactions in basic research an enquiry into impact pathways at the DESY synchrotron," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:127:y:2022:i:12:d:10.1007_s11192-022-04374-x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.