Adriana Valente

Scientific and Technological Performance by Gender

The availability of sex-disaggregated data in the fields of research, technology and development is extremely important for supporting the growing political commitment to promote and monitor women participation in the different fields of S&T. During the late 1990s the European Commission identified as a priority the availability of this data. Even if scientific publications and patents are widely accepted indicators of scientific and technological performances, until now it has been impossible to measure bibliometric and patent output by gender in a large set of data. Starting from a feasibility study carried out for the European Commission on the whole set of patents published in 1998 by the European Patent Office and on 30,000 authors of items published in 1995 on scientific journals of international relevance, the paper demonstrates that it is possible to obtain robust gender indicators on S&T output.

Integrating research evidence and physical activity policy making-REPOPA project

Evidence shows that regular physical activity is enhanced by supporting environment. Studies are needed to integrate research evidence into health enhancing, cross-sector physical activity (HEPA) policy making. This article presents the rationale, study design, measurement procedures and the initial results of the first phase of six European countries in a five-year research project (2011-2016), REsearch into POlicy to enhance Physical Activity (REPOPA). REPOPA is programmatic research; it consists of linked studies; the first phase studied the use of evidence in 21 policies in implementation to learn more in depth from the policy making process and carried out 86 qualitative stakeholder interviews. The second, ongoing phase builds on the central findings of the first phase in each country; it consists of two sets of interventions: game simulations to study cross-sector collaboration and organizational change processes in the use of evidence and locally tailored interventions to increase knowledge integration. The results of the first two study phases will be tested and validated among policy makers and other stakeholders in the third phase using a Delphi process. Initial results from the first project phase showed the lack of explicit evidence use in HEPA policy making. Facilitators and barriers of the evidence use were the availability of institutional resources and support but also networking between researchers and policy makers. REPOPA will increase understanding use of research evidence in different contexts; develop guidance and tools and establish sustainable structures such as networks and platforms between academics and policy makers across relevant sectors.

Challenges of Ethical Clearance in International Health Policy and Social Sciences Research: Experiences and Recommendations from a Multi-Country Research Programme

AbstractBackground: Research ethics review practices vary considerably across countries and this variability poses a challenge for international research programmes. Although published guidelines exist, which describe underlying principles that should be considered and pragmatic approaches that could be followed in seeking ethics approval, most have roots in biomedical and clinical research. The result is that there is generally less clarity around institutional and/or country-level structures for ethics review of health policy and social sciences research. This is an important gap that needs to be addressed in order to ensure ethical practices in multi-country research programmes. Context and purpose: This paper explores research ethics requirements for a multicountry health policy research programme and provides recommendations based on experiences in seeking ethics approval. The context for this paper is a five-year, cross-country, European Commission-funded international programme: Research into Policy to enhance Physical Activity (REPOPA). Results: Ethics requirements and review processes for health policy and social sciences research varied considerably across the seven REPOPA countries. Specifically, requirements and infrastructure for ethics approval have been influenced by how the purpose and domain of health research are defined in legislation, what types of research have been most prominently funded, and international requirements for ethics approval by external funders and journal editors. Significance: Multi-country research programmes provide an opportunity to enhance and build transparent ethics review practices and to strengthen ethics review structures at all levels. Such programmes also enable reciprocal learning about relevant practices and processes for the ethical conduct of research.

Determinants of evidence use in public health policy making: Results from a study across six EU countries

Highlights • Media attitude towards underpinning policy with evidence influences policy decision makers.• Individual skills, attitudes, values of policy makers impact the extent evidence use.• A solid research infrastructure is facilitating but not sufficient for evidence use.• Factors that impact evidence use in policy making differ by country and policy context.• Interventions connecting policy makers and researchers in the policy context seem most promising.

Different Contexts in Electronic Communication: Some Remarks on the Communicability of Scientific Knowledge.

This paper explores how and to what extent the appearance and wide use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) may enhance scientific communication and knowledge. The first part analyses the general boundaries of scientific communication, focusing on the use of email. It summarises and develops the results of relevant international studies and surveys on computer‐mediated communication; it identifies, on the one hand, the principal social settings and contexts in which email is used and, on the other, the characteristic features which determine specific communication models. The analysis provides evidence of the various factors which determine the dynamics of electronic communication and which, more specifically, define the difference between business and scientific communication. The second part of the paper explores the close relationship between communication and knowledge in the scientific sector and the role played by ICTs. The assumption that ICTs ought to enhance the acquisition, sharing and transmission of scientific knowledge is questioned by the distinction between explicit and tacit knowledge: ICTs ultimately appear to provide a strong drive only to processes of explicit/coded knowledge handling. Nevertheless, exploring the main components of tacit knowledge in depth, and considering recent ICT‐based applications, it is possible to foresee new opportunities for the creation and dissemination of knowledge through networks.

Science communication and information dissemination: the role of the information professional in the 'Perception and Awareness of Science' project

The paper reports on the methodology and results of a project on the perception and awareness of science, carried out by the Italian National Research Council, the British Council Italy and the Rosselli Foundation. The project, addressed to upper high school and university students, aims to clarify understanding of the interaction between science and society both by means of information and communication technologies (ICT) and by means of public debates with scientists. Different obstacles encountered by the actors involved in the project are also outlined. Three topics have been chosen to stimulate public debate: GMOs, electromagnetic pollution and space exploration. The authors discuss the innovative methodology and the key stages involved in this process of awareness. Each public debate envisages four key steps: (i) setting up and supplying students with scientific documentation on a selected topic in electronic format, in order to highlight the potential of the internet in the process of information dissemination and how it can be effective in a project of science communication to the public; (ii) informed debate in the classroom between teachers and students on the chosen topic; (iii) public debate with Italian and British scientists; and (iv) a final report to be drawn up by the students.

Collective Awareness Platforms and Digital Social Innovation Mediating Consensus Seeking in Problem Situations

In this paper we show the results of our studies carried out in the framework of the European Project SciCafe2.0 in the area of Participatory Engagement models. We present a methodological approach built on participative engagements models and holistic framework for problem situation clarification and solution impacts assessment. Several online platforms for social engagement have been analysed to extract the main patterns of participative engagement. We present our own experiments through the SciCafe2.0 Platform and our insights from requirements elicitation.

Epistemic Consequences of Bibliometrics-based Evaluation: Insights from the Scientific Community

The aim of this paper is to investigate the consequences of the bibliometrics-based evaluation system of scientific production on the contents and methods of sciences. The research has been conducted by means of in-depth interviews to a multi-disciplinary panel of Italian researchers. We discuss the implications of bibliometrics-based evaluation on the choice of the research topic, on the experimental practices, on the dissemination habits. We observe that the validation of the bibliometrics-based evaluation practices relies on the acceptance and diffusion within the scientific community, and that these practices are self-sustained through their wide application. We discuss possible evolving scenarios, also considering the recent development of digital archives.

Educational Approach to Environmental Complexity in Life Sciences School Manuals: An Analysis Across Countries

The BIOHEAD-Citizen project was aimed to deepen the understanding of how different aspects of citizenship can be promoted through biology, health and environmental education. Teachers’ conceptions, defined as constructs emerging from the interaction of knowledge, values and social practices (Clement, 2006), and the conceptions implicit in the messages conveyed by science school manuals were the targets of the investigations. This chapter is aimed at presenting an overview of the main findings concerning environmental education (EE) that resulted from the analyses of life sciences manuals carried out in the countries participating in the European project “Biology, Health and Environmental Education for better citizenship”.

Actors Engagement and Tailored Methods in Physical Education and Sport Curriculum as a Policy Lab

This paper describes an innovative process of assessment and improvement of the physical education and sport curriculum developed within the European Erasmus Plus project DIYPES. This process joins together two approaches: the Policy Lab, rooted in the Responsible Research and Innovation framework, aimed at involving stakeholders in the policy change processes; and the UNESCO “curriculum system” framework, that values not formal and not explicit levels of the curriculum. Merging these two approaches allows to design and tailor methods to address the “curriculum system”, promoting social actors engagement and co-production of knowledge with the aim of collective curriculum improvement.