Laurens K. Hessels

In search of relevance: The changing contract between science and society

This paper presents a framework to study the historical development of the relationship between science and society. We elaborate this relationship as a contract that specifies the mission of scientific research, the rationales for public support for science, and the conditions under which scientists work. These three structural elements will always be part of the contract, but their specific content can vary. The credibility cycle, as a model for scientific practice, helps to describe and understand the consequences of a changing contract for the work of individual scientists. A brief case study of chemistry in the Netherlands demonstrates the usefulness of the framework. We show how concepts of relevance have changed since 1975 and how this affects the practice of academic chemistry.

The effects of a changing institutional environment on academic research practices: three cases from agricultural science

This paper investigates the varying effects of a changing institutional environment on academic research practices in three fields of Dutch animal science. Our analysis shows that the shifts in funding have stimulated interactions with societal stakeholders in fields where this has helped to sustain a basic research agenda. In other fields researchers experience a tension between satisfying the needs of application-oriented funding sources and reaching high scores on evaluations dominated by bibliometric indicators. The paper concludes with the identification of three field characteristics that seem to moderate the effects of institutional changes on academic research practices. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Practical Applications as a Source of Credibility: A Comparison of Three Fields of Dutch Academic Chemistry

In many Western science systems, funding structures increasingly stimulate academic research to contribute to practical applications, but at the same time the rise of bibliometric performance assessments have strengthened the pressure on academics to conduct excellent basic research that can be published in scholarly literature. We analyze the interplay between these two developments in a set of three case studies of fields of chemistry in the Netherlands. First, we describe how the conditions under which academic chemists work have changed since 1975. Second, we investigate whether practical applications have become a source of credibility for individual researchers. Indeed, this turns out to be the case in catalysis, where connecting with industrial applications helps in many steps of the credibility cycle. Practical applications yield much less credibility in environmental chemistry, where application-oriented research agendas help to acquire funding, but not to publish prestigious papers or to earn peer recognition. In biochemistry practical applications hardly help in gaining credibility, as this field is still strongly oriented at fundamental questions. The differences between the fields can be explained by the presence or absence of powerful upstream end-users, who can afford to invest in academic research with promising long term benefits.

The Mixed Blessing of Mode 2 Knowledge Production

The notion of Mode 2 knowledge production (Gibbons et al. 1994, Nowotny et al. 2001) already has a remarkable history. It was launched fifteen years ago to capture the ongoing changes in the world of science, science policy and the knowledge economy at large. While it is not the only attempt to make sense of the change, it definitively is the most popular. Since its publication in 1994, ‘The New Production of Knowledge’ (Gibbons et al. 1994), which has coined the notions of Mode 1 and Mode 2, has received almost 1900 citations in scientific journals . It is a blessing that it has helped both scholars and policymakers to get a grip on the profound changes going on in contemporary science systems. But the concept of Mode 2 knowledge production also proved to be a mixed blessing by creating confusion and by conflating interrelated yet independent trends.

Coordination in the science system: theoretical framework and a case study of an intermediary organization

Many science systems are witnessing the rise of intermediary organizations with a coordinating mission, but to date a systematic understanding of their function and effects is lacking. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the coordinating efforts of intermediary organizations. Starting from the definition of coordination as the establishment or strengthening of a relationship among the activities in a system, with the aim to enhance their common effectiveness, I develop a heuristic framework that facilitates the systematic analysis of coordination in science. I illustrate and substantiate my framework with the empirical case study of a Dutch coordination task force in the area of chemical technologies. Thanks to the framework I could disentangle a number of functions that this task force fulfils concerning research programming, funding allocation and supporting interactions and collaborations. This approach enabled me to systematically analyse a very heterogeneous set of processes that each deserve to be called coordination. The analysis yields a clear overview of eight coordination processes that are each described in terms of activities, intervention, relationships, mechanisms and performance. I conclude my paper with suggestions for further research on coordination in the science system.

Changing struggles for relevance in eight fields of natural science

This paper investigates the consequences of institutional changes on academic research practices in eight fields of natural science in the Netherlands. The authors analyse the similarities and differences among the dynamics of these different fields and reflect on possible explanations for the changes observed. The study shows that the increasing pressure for productivity, as measured in bibliometric terms, can counteract the pressure for practical utility. Moreover, the work indicates that the dynamics of science varies much more across scientific fields than most of the literature suggests is the case.

The influence of proximity dimensions on international research collaboration: an analysis of European water projects

Abstract In this paper we investigate the effect of geographical, organisational and social proximity on the propensity of organisations to collaborate internationally in knowledge production. We apply logistic regression models on data from water research projects in the European Union’s Framework Programme 1–7. Although the main challenges in the water sector typically cut across borders, knowledge development is traditionally organised in national systems. These systems have a long tradition in collaborating across societal sectors. Despite the fact that about half of the collaborations in the Framework Programmes are not proximate at all, we show that all three proximity dimensions contribute to the propensity to collaborate. The three dimensions of proximity are weakly correlated, and there is a small substitution effect between organisational and geographical proximity.

The Drawbacks of Project Funding for Epistemic Innovation: Comparing Institutional Affordances and Constraints of Different Types of Research Funding

Abstract Over the past decades, science funding shows a shift from recurrent block funding towards project funding mechanisms. However, our knowledge of how project funding arrangements influence the organizational and epistemic properties of research is limited. To study this relation, a bridge between science policy studies and science studies is necessary. Recent studies have analyzed the relation between the affordances and constraints of project grants and the epistemic properties of research. However, the potentially very different affordances and constraints of funding arrangements such as awards, prizes and fellowships, have not yet been taken into account. Drawing on eight case studies of funding arrangements in high performing Dutch research groups, this study compares the institutional affordances and constraints of prizes with those of project grants and their effects on organizational and epistemic properties of research. We argue that the prize case studies diverge from project-funded research in three ways: 1) a more flexible use, and adaptation of use, of funds during the research process compared to project grants; 2) investments in the larger organization which have effects beyond the research project itself; and 3), closely related, greater deviation from epistemic and organizational standards. The increasing dominance of project funding arrangements in Western science systems is therefore argued to be problematic in light of epistemic and organizational innovation. Funding arrangements that offer funding without scholars having to submit a project-proposal remain crucial to support researchers and research groups to deviate from epistemic and organizational standards.