Scientists who engage with society perform better academically

arXiv:0810.4672v2 [stat.AP] 31 Oct 2008 Scientists who engage with society perform better academically Pablo Jensen1,2,3,4,* Jean-Baptiste Rouquier1,2,6 Pablo Kreimer5 Yves Croissant1,4 July 1, 2008 Abstract Today, most scientific institutions acknowledge the importance of opening the so-called “ivory tower” of academic research through popularization, industrial innovation or teaching. However, little is known about the actual openness of scientific institutions and how their proclaimed priorities translate into concrete measures. This paper helps getting an idea on the actual practices by studying three key points: the proportion of researchers who are active in dissemination, the academic productivity of these active scientists, and the institutional recognition of their activity in terms of careers. This paper answers these questions by analyzing extensive data about the academic production, career recognition and teaching or public/industrial outreach of several thousand CNRS scientists from many disciplines. We find that, contrary to what is often suggested, scientists active in dissemination are also more active academically. However, their dissemination activities have almost no impact (positive or negative) on their career. 1 Introduction Researchers and academic institutions seem to have admitted the importance of establishing strong ties between science and society. In the United Kingdom, Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society, points out that “Researchers need to engage more fully with the public. The Royal Society recognizes this, and is keen to ensure that such engagement is helpful and effective”. A recent survey carried out by the Royal Society finds that “Most researchers have highlighted that social and ethical implications exist in their research, agree that the public needs to know about them, and believe that researchers themselves have a duty, as well as a primary responsibility, for communicating their research and its implications to the non-specialist public.” [Society (2006)] In France, the CNRS declares in the document supposed to steer his long-term policy, the “Multi-year action plan” [CNRS (2004)], that one of the six top priorities is “to transfer research results to industries” and another “to strengthen the relations between science and society”. In February 2007, CNRS organized an official workshop on “Science and Society in transformation”, in presence of many CNRS officials [Allix (2007)]. This attitude seems to be shared by the majority of researchers: in her study on the attitudes of researchers towards popularization [Cheveign´e (2007)], Suzanne de Cheveign´e concluded: “All interviewed researchers unanimously declared: popularization is now a key and unavoidable component of research work.” Motivations provided by researchers are numerous: the yearning to inform the public, to make one’s field of research better known and encourage students to take up science, or the need to account to civil society for the use of funds provided to laboratories. The reality on the field is generally aloof from these generous ideas. For example, in the CNRS report for candidating to the “Directeur de Recherche” (Senior Scientist) position, a mere 9 lines are provided to summarize twenty years of research dissemination. Likewise, the Royal Society survey concludes that, for most scientists, “research is the only game in town”, and popularization has to be done after one is through with “real” work. 1Universit´e de Lyon 2Institut des Syst`emes Complexes Rhˆone-Alpes (IXXI) 3Laboratoire de Physique, ´Ecole Normale Sup´erieure de Lyon and CNRS, 69007 Lyon, FRANCE 4Laboratoire d’´Economie des Transports, Universit´e Lyon 2 and CNRS, 69007 Lyon, FRANCE 5Instituto de Estudios de la Ciencia, Solis 1067, C-1078 AAU Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina 6Laboratoire d’Informatique du parall`elisme, ´Ecole Normale Sup´erieure de Lyon and CNRS, 69007 Lyon, FRANCE ∗Corresponding author : pablo.jensen@ens-lyon.fr 1 The purpose of this paper is to obtain an empirical picture of dissemination practices in CNRS. We have presented in a previous study [Jensen and Croissant (2007)] a statistical view of scientists involved in popular- ization. Here, we also include data on teaching and industrial collaborations. Moreover, we correlate these data with scientists’ academic activity, as quantified by bibliometric records. Therefore, we are able, for the first time, to answer two important questions about scientists active in dissemination: are they “bad scientists” as some scientists suggest [Society (2006)]? Do they get any institutional recognition in terms of careers ? We answer these questions by analyzing extensive data about the academic production, career recognition and teaching or public/industrial outreach of several thousand CNRS scientists from many disciplines. 2 Methodology Thanks to the CNRS Human Resources Direction, we have gathered data on the dissemination activities (public outreach, industrial col

…(Full text truncated)…

This content is AI-processed based on ArXiv data.