Improving fitness: Mapping research priorities against societal needs on obesity

📝 Abstract

Science policy is increasingly shifting towards an emphasis in societal problems or grand challenges. As a result, new evaluative tools are needed to help assess not only the knowledge production side of research programmes or organisations, but also the articulation of research agendas with societal needs. In this paper, we present an exploratory investigation of science supply and societal needs on the grand challenge of obesity -an emerging health problem with enormous social costs. We illustrate a potential approach that uses topic modelling to explore: (a) how scientific publications can be used to describe existing priorities in science production; (b) how records of questions posed in the European parliament can be used as an instance of mapping discourse of social needs; (c) how the comparison between the two may show (mis)alignments between societal concerns and scientific outputs. While this is a technical exercise, we propose that this type of mapping methods can be useful for informing strategic planning and evaluation in funding agencies.

💡 Analysis

Science policy is increasingly shifting towards an emphasis in societal problems or grand challenges. As a result, new evaluative tools are needed to help assess not only the knowledge production side of research programmes or organisations, but also the articulation of research agendas with societal needs. In this paper, we present an exploratory investigation of science supply and societal needs on the grand challenge of obesity -an emerging health problem with enormous social costs. We illustrate a potential approach that uses topic modelling to explore: (a) how scientific publications can be used to describe existing priorities in science production; (b) how records of questions posed in the European parliament can be used as an instance of mapping discourse of social needs; (c) how the comparison between the two may show (mis)alignments between societal concerns and scientific outputs. While this is a technical exercise, we propose that this type of mapping methods can be useful for informing strategic planning and evaluation in funding agencies.

📄 Content

Improving fitness: Mapping research priorities against societal needs on obesity Lorenzo Cassi1, Agénor Lahatte2, Ismael Rafols3, Pierre Sautier4 and Élisabeth de Turckheim5 1 lorenzo.cassi@uni-paris1.fr Observatoire des Sciences et Techniques (HCERES-OST) Paris School of Economics, University Paris 1, Paris, France 2 agenor.lahatte@hceres.fr Observatoire des Sciences et Techniques (HCERES-OST), Paris, France 3 i.rafols@ingenio.upv.es Ingenio (CSIC-UPV), Universitat Politècnica de València, València, Spain, CWTS, University of Leiden, Leiden, The Netherlands SPRU (Science and Technology Policy Research), University of Sussex, Brighton, UK 4 pr.sautier@gmail.com Observatoire des Sciences et Techniques (HCERES-OST), Paris, France Ingenio (CSIC-UPV), Universitat Politècnica de València, València, Spain 5 elisabeth.deturckheim@

almacha.org Observatoire des Sciences et Techniques (HCERES-OST), Paris, France INRA, Délégation à l’évaluation, Paris, France Version of October 10th, 2017 Abstract Science policy is increasingly shifting towards an emphasis in societal problems or grand challenges. As a result, new evaluative tools are needed to help assess not only the knowledge production side of research programmes or organisations, but also the articulation of research agendas with societal needs. In this paper, we present an exploratory investigation of science supply and societal needs on the grand challenge of obesity - an emerging health problem with enormous social costs. We illustrate a potential approach that uses topic modelling to explore: (a) how scientific publications can be used to describe existing priorities in science production; (b) how policy records (in this case here questions posed in the European parliament) can be used as an instance of mapping discourse of social needs; (c) how the comparison between the two may show (mis)alignments between societal concerns and scientific outputs. While this is a technical exercise, we propose that this type of mapping methods can be useful to domain experts for informing strategic planning and evaluation in funding agencies. Keywords: research agenda, science mapping, societal needs, obesity, topic modeling 1/37

1. Introduction Assessing the contribution of research to address complex global problems or grand challenges - such as climate change, food security, poverty reduction, the risk of global pandemics - has become increasingly important in science policy as governments are under pressure to justify and legitimise their spending in research (Swedish Presidency of the European Union, 2009). Conventional bibliometric techniques have been successful in providing tools that allow estimating production and research performance of scientific fields (Moed, 2005). In fact, they have been so successful, that their use has been stretched to contexts or areas beyond their validity or they have resulted in problematic or perverse incentives (Weingart, 2005; Hicks et al., 2015). However, addressing a societal problem does not only (or necessarily) require improving the production and quality of research on that problem. Conducting a lot of research of the highest quality about part of the knowledge base (e.g. electricity generation) is not enough if other parts of the knowledge are not achieved (e.g. electricity distribution). Addressing societal problems requires to link and potentially to coordinate of a variety of stakeholders with different areas of expertise and pursuing diverse research avenues (Ely, Van Zwanenberg & Stirling, 2014). Assessing scientific production and quality is not enough. Tools that help assess or manage the types of research topics, the types of actors involved and their relationships are thus needed. In this article we explore a mapping methods to help identify research topics relevant for a societal challenge, in this case obesity. We believe these methods should be used interactively in close collaboration with domain experts as part of a large methodology that includes deliberation with diverse expertise and stakeholders. Obesity is an interesting issue for this exercise because it is a serious condition in which different types of policy interventions can be prioritised (PorGrow project, Millstone et al. 2006). Obesity is “a critical global issue”. It has been considered as a disease by WHO since 1948 and its the global burden of disease has been highlighted since 1997 (James, 2008). Nearly 30 per cent of world population is estimated to be overweight or obese (Dobbs, Sawers, Thompson et al. 2014) and the current estimations predict that “if these trends continue, by 2025, global obesity prevalence will reach 18% in men and surpass 21% in women; severe obesity will surpass 6% in men and 9% in women” (NCD-RiskC, 2016). Moreover, obesity is a global issue since it concerns both developed and developing countries. Facing this epidemic requires a systemic set of interventions that address the different issues rel

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