Why understanding the nature of partnerships is crucial to knowledge transfer programs

What are universities for? With pressures on funding, academic freedoms under scrutiny and volatile global demographic changes, the need to prove new knowledge can have tangible outputs has never been greater. Simon Linacre looks at one university in the UK which is leading the way in research transformation.

When Digital Science launched its Research Transformation campaign in early April, one of the key aspects the team behind the initiative wanted to explore was not just the ‘what’ of how research enabled change, but the nature of the connection itself between the two sides. For many of us involved in academic research or in industry, we only see one side of this transformation, but don’t stop to think about what has enabled it in the first place. 

A key element of research transformation is the ability to understand research from different perspectives, and this is often described in policy documents and commentaries in general terms without spelling out the practicalities of what is going on. And yet to fully understand how to make the shift from working within research institutions to achieving worthwhile impact in industry, it’s the practicalities that in the end really matter. 

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships

To help us better understand both the nature of the connection between research and industry and the practicalities involved, what better way than to talk to one of the UK’s leading exponents of knowledge transfer partnerships – or KTPs – in the shape of Leeds Beckett University. LBU has one of the largest student populations in the UK at around 28,000, and ever since it started life back in the early 19th century as Leeds Mechanics Institute, it has had strong links with industry. In the UK, there has been a tradition of KTPs which celebrate their 50th anniversary in 2025. They are partly funded by the government and aim to facilitate the transfer of knowledge and technical skills from universities into industry, as well as improve the skills and business awareness of new graduates.

LBU has been particularly active in this area, with a number of successful partnerships set up with local businesses. Interestingly, these partnerships are not a straightforward transfer of knowledge or expertise from one party to another just for commercial gain, but acknowledge a need on the part of the business for a shift or change in their development, aligned to the business’ wider strategic objectives. We spoke to Jo Griffiths, Head of Knowledge Transfer Partnerships at LBU, to learn more about the connection with businesses and what this shift looks like.

“I am hugely heartened by the sense that businesses see themselves as part of a wider ecosystem and force for good.”

Jo Griffiths, Leeds Beckett University

“I’ve noticed an increase in the number of organizations we’re working with that describe doing something positive and different for the wider community as a key part of their strategic aims. Whether that’s addressing a big global challenge like sustainability – or making changes at a local level to support the growth of the wider business community – I am hugely heartened by the sense that businesses see themselves as part of a wider ecosystem and force for good,” says Ms Griffiths. 

“One recent example is that of NuGreen and sister company QMedical. They are small SMEs based on the border of Yorkshire and Lancashire in the UK. Their aspiration is to turn healthcare waste (all that bagged waste you see in hospitals and clinics) into substitute aggregates, principally sand, for use in the construction sector. Working in partnership with material scientists and engineers from the university via the KTP funding, they’re testing and bringing to market new products by converting the waste into something useful.

“There are many other discussions and projects like this being developed – we’re working on projects with third sector, not-for-profit and charities too. And yes, there is a positive commercial impact to the organization from the proposed partnerships (they wouldn’t get the funding without that) but absolutely key to all of them is how they support others – whether at an individual level, at a community level or as part of a wider shift in societal attitudes and insight.”

Benefits

The advantages of such relationships are clear, and are neatly summarized in the graphic below, where there is a symbiotic relationship between a qualified graduate (known as an ‘associate’) who leads the change, the university which creates the teaching or research, and the organization which sees improved performance as a result of the arrangement. Add in to that environmental benefits as seen in the example shared by Jo Griffiths above, it’s clear why such programs have been embraced by so many organizations and universities in the UK.

But is there also a deeper transformation at play, where the implementation itself can inform further research down the line? One high profile academic at LBU has been involved in a number of KTPs, some of which have yielded significant results for the research he conducts. Dr Jim Morgan is Principal Lecturer at LBU, specializing in Human Factors and Occupational (Health) Psychology, and he has been involved in a number of successful KTPs while working at LBU.

For example, he was involved in a project between major infrastructure services and engineering firm Amey, which partnered with LBU on the Target Zero SafetySmart Project. This came about as Amey was facing a challenge regarding one of its employee commitments, which was to create zero harm for them in what were often safety-critical environments. The senior management team at Amey worked with LBU’s Psychology Applied to Safety and Health (PASH) research group on the KTP, filling the recognized need for formal psychological and behavioral knowledge and skills among Amey colleagues to implement and embed behavioral safety strategies and solutions.

The result after a three-year project with Amey’s Consulting and Rail division and LBU was an agreed approach that included both quantitative and qualitative psychological research methods that created a flexible, long-term framework. This, alongside a more detailed understanding of accident risk saw a decrease in incidents, and also led to some cost reductions linked to accidents and incidents.

Case study

LBU has had not one but two successful KTP case studies working with the well-established rail infrastructure companies, Amey and VolkerRail. The following details are drawn from LBU’s REF Impact Case Study in 2021.

BACKGROUND: Human safety is understandably critical to the railway maintenance industry. The UK Network Rail workforce safety statistics for the five years up to 2013/2014 show that major injuries rose by a quarter, and lost time to injuries more than doubled in that time. In addition to personal suffering, the financial cost of workplace injuries was estimated to be nearly £5bn at this time.

At LBU, the Psychology Applied to Safety and Health (PASH) research group – led by Dr Jim Morgan and Dr Matteo Curcuruto – are involved in a research program focused on “helping safety-critical organizations to translate Organizational Psychology, Human Factors, and Health Psychology research knowledge into enhanced behavioral safety management practices”. This research has been funded by, among other sources, two Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs) in collaboration with industry partners, namely Amey and VolkerRail.

RESEARCH: The research employed in the programs used a ‘bottom-up approach’ to directly involve workers from the start. This approach aimed to generate improved communication, trust and a better culture of safety, with research conducted with workers at the two rail companies, as well as other workers from similar industries.

IMPACT: The result of the SafetySmart project (with Amey) has been clear, with rail operations reduced by a third in lost time injuries and a quarter in non-lost time injuries. Overall, the company estimates as a result of SafetySmart turnover will increase by over £1.3m in the three years after the project finished.

The programs have also achieved industry recognition, with the Amey KTP awarded the highest rating of “Outstanding” by Innovate UK assessors based on impact for the firm, and second highest rating of “Very Good” for the VolkerRail YourAIM project. 

Additionally, VolkerRail estimates that as a result of the YourAIM project turnover increased by a quarter of a million pounds, with a further £1m in the three years following the project being completed.

SUMMARY: Research by PASH has undoubtedly developed the safety culture at both Amey and VolkerRail, with demonstrable improvements in hours worked and turnover. Moreover, both companies have now implemented robust behavioral safety protocols to keep an eye on safety-critical workflows, further improving safety. The KTP program therefore not only improves human working conditions and business outcomes, but is also part of a symbiotic relationship with research, providing rich data for further research at universities like LBU.

See Jim and Matteo’s KTP-funded research articles in Dimensions here.

Future REFerence

The ability for universities to show impactful work outside labs and field studies is particularly important in the UK due to its system of research funding, known as the Research Excellence Framework or REF. Billions of pounds of research funding from the government is determined by how universities and their departments perform in their research programs, and KTPs are a key plank in an institution’s strategy to show how their research can have a positive impact on lives and social wellbeing. In Dr Morgan’s words, KTPs are “simply brilliant for the REF”, as they show the impact research programs at universities can have, as well as helping with the recruitment and work experience of postgraduate students, many of whom find employment with KTP partners when their studies have been completed.

So, there are numerous reasons why a university such as LBU should pursue KTPs, and rightly be proud of what they have achieved with the numerous projects they have supported and delivered. What is interesting from a research perspective is the importance of the role people play in the projects, both in terms of the interactions between the university and external organizations, as well as the outcomes and how they positively impact individuals’ lives. In addition, it is also clear that the individual researchers themselves gain a huge amount of wider knowledge from their work over and above the project focus. All in all, given the right structure and opportunities to make a difference through research, researchers can do just that.

The post What a difference making a difference makes appeared first on Digital Science.

 In this week’s fourth Spotlight on the value of social science research, we assess the final ingredient to improve UK research and innovation: why social sciences are essential to international collaboration and tackling shared global challenges.

The focus of the Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS) report Reimagining the Recipe for Research & Innovation has understandably been parochial in nature, based as it is in the UK and tackling some of the unique challenges faced by researchers operating in the UK. However, the final piece in the AcSS jigsaw in its argument for using social sciences to support STEM research looks further afield, and analyzes how social science research in general can improve collaboration and societal problems on a global scale.

There are a couple of sound contextual reasons why this argument has a strong base. Firstly, as the UK is home to some of the most highly regarded research institutions, it is well placed to offer some guidance on this aspect of research. And perhaps most importantly, with the UK having benefited from some of the more progressive higher education policies in the shape of its Research Excellence Framework (REF) and early adoption of Open Access mandates, it can offer some leadership in making recommendations for future research strategy.

Covid insights

In the AcSS report, its authors – which include Dr Juergen Wastl and Kathryn Weber-Boer from Digital Science – identify the fourth and final ingredient specifically as the ability of social sciences to enable progress through international collaboration and meeting global challenges. No global challenge has been greater in recent times than the Covid-19 pandemic, and using this example, the authors show how insights from both STEM and social science research were necessary to successfully fight the spread and control of the disease. 

We see some specific examples of this in the case study below, but to further illustrate the important role social sciences have played, the report looks at how research in all areas has supported the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Looking at how both UK researchers and those internationally have focused on these global challenges, the authors used Dimensions to identify some interesting trends (see Figure 1). For example: 

• The volume of publications is greater – and the average number of citations lower – for ‘social’ SDGs when compared with the ‘economic’ and ‘environmental’ SDGs, across all of the datasets
• For UK-authored papers, about a quarter of SDG-related publications are in the social sciences – either uniquely or in collaboration with STEM colleagues – and some three-quarters are in the STEM area
• Within each of the three main subdivisions – STEM, social science and STEM/social science – UK-authored publications have much greater citation rates than the average globally
• The biggest increase in citation rates – compared with the global average – for UK-authored papers is around double in many cases
• Collaborative studies across social science and STEM account for a minority of publications however they are among the most cited research.

Impact of impact

Perhaps one of the more remarkable findings in the AcSS study is that, when analyzing the impact studies that form part of the UK’s REF program in 2021 – where universities present the wider impacts their research has had – the social sciences show a greater contribution in most of the eight categories they are broken down into. While STEM leads in Health and Technology as one might expect, social sciences lead in Societal and Economic impacts.

No global challenge has been greater in recent times than the Covid-19 pandemic… insights from both STEM and social science research were necessary to successfully fight the spread and control of the disease.

Case study

The case study used to illustrate the influence of the social sciences in the AcSS report concerns the Covid-19 pandemic and how social sciences – not on their own and in collaboration with STEM research – helped the government and health services navigate through one of the world’s most challenging episodes.

One article they cite, published in Nature Human Behaviour in April 2020, was an early attempt by a large group of scholars to share not only their collective insights in order to enable a more effective response to the pandemic, but the gaps that were evident and needed to be filled. This collaborative response to the pandemic included advice on influencing credible community sources of information and advice on how to frame public health messaging. 

The pioneering work on drug discovery obviously played a huge part in overcoming Covid-19, but much of that great work might have been wasted had social science research not played its part in how vaccines were deployed. When we look back on this and the other three ingredients – enabling whole systems thinking, critical for good policy development and underpinning smart and responsible innovation – the Covid example is emblematic of the value that social sciences can bring. Important on their own, but vital when plugged into STEM research, collaboration and solving some of the world’s most pressing problems.

It is this collaborative approach between the social sciences and STEM research that has been one of the key aspects of the Spotlight series. From the first Spotlight on seeing a more complete picture from whole systems thinking, through to effective policy making and responsible innovation, it has been notable not so much what value can be brought through collaboration between social sciences and STEM, but what can also be lost when they don’t work in harmony. Hopefully this series and the AcSS report it has highlighted can ensure fewer wasted opportunities to make a difference in the future.

Next Time

We will continue our Spotlight series next month, so please watch out for more details on Digital Science’s LinkedIn and Twitter/X accounts – as well as right here on TL;DR.

The post In the spotlight: Social sciences’ fourth key ingredient for research success appeared first on Digital Science.

Last week’s Spotlight on social science research looked at its potential contribution to UK policy making. This week we identify the third key ingredient to improve UK research and innovation: how social sciences can underpin smart and responsible innovation.

The third ingredient in our Spotlight series on social science contribution is arguably the most easily recognizable one: that social sciences are essential to research and innovation in the area of governance, and how it should be an enabler rather than an obstacle to technological progress. 

The report on which these Spotlight pieces have been based – Reimagining the Recipe for Research & Innovation by the Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS) – identifies that the social sciences occupy a strategically vital place in their ability to enhance our understanding of human behavior, public opinion, legal systems, markets and policy. Without this understanding, the underpinning of any research and innovation program becomes much less stable.

Three’s a charm

The authors of the AcSS report – which include Dr Juergen Wastl and Kathryn Weber-Boer from Digital Science – identify the third ingredient specifically as the ability of social sciences to take on board different perspectives. For example, historical, geographical/cultural and legal perspectives all lend themselves to a wider understanding of the import and impact of technological innovation. The authors use the case of biotechnology governance to illustrate their point – some countries will regulate keenly, while others will have a more laissez faire approach, depending on contextual factors relevant to each dominant culture or nation state.

Sometimes these factors can be encapsulated in a single paper – the authors identify such an article that looks at legal implications of EU law and AI, which can spread across different areas in a way that STEM papers would struggle to achieve, and in doing so build bridges between those areas.

Active ingredient

Perhaps more than any other ingredient in this four-part series, the role social sciences play in underpinning smart and responsible innovation is perhaps the most dynamic and visible.

The authors show this by using Dimensions data: according to Dimensions, most UK research in law relating to digital health had been funded through the UK’s engineering and physical sciences public funding body. Research that had been funded in this way related to specific areas such as governance of AI and smart home security – in other words, social science research influencing and informing innovation.

More than any other ingredient… the role social sciences play in underpinning smart and responsible innovation is perhaps the most dynamic and visible.

Case study

The specific case study drawn out by the AcSS report authors concerns the hot topic of AI and how it relates to the field of robotics. Where does social science fit in here? The authors identify a specific paper which they see as emblematic of the influence social sciences can have on research and innovation.

The article in question identified an apparent incompatibility between European notions of discrimination and existing work on algorithmic and automated fairness. The article made three key arguments: EU non-discrimination law doesn’t provide a ‘static’ framework aligned with testing for discrimination in AI systems; discrimination is essentially a human behavior, and as such is difficult to identify in AI systems; setting standards of evidence might help make processes consistent, but not necessarily where judicial decisions are involved related to AI. 

More broadly, interdisciplinary research at one university has been shown to influence understanding of the impact of AI technologies on human rights, in turn helping to define human rights standards. Such impacts, where knowledge and experience embedded in social science research can support innovation and its responsible adoption, are likely to be critical as AI and other new technologies emerge.

Next Time

The fourth and final ingredient is… Social sciences are essential to international collaboration and tackling shared global challenges.

The post In the spotlight: Social sciences’ third key ingredient for research success appeared first on Digital Science.

Following on from last week’s Spotlight post on social science research and its potential contribution to UK research and innovation, here we take a look at the second key ingredient to improve the UK’s STEM research: how vital the social sciences are in developing robust policy making.

The report on which these Spotlight pieces have been based – Reimagining the Recipe for Research & Innovation by the Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS) – has received huge coverage since its publication in January, with the “Secret Sauce” report featured in the Financial Times, Nature, Times Higher Education, WonkHE and Research Professional among others, and further news outlet coverage (see Altmetric). Interestingly, what we can see here is the embodiment of the second ingredient identified in the report’s ‘secret sauce’, namely how social science research itself can have an impact on UK policy making. One way this can happen is through coverage of social science research in national, international and industry media.

Cooking up a storm

The AcSS report seeks to elucidate how the UK’s research and innovation (R&I) can improve, which the report argues is through targeted investment in social sciences as a complement to STEM research. The authors – which include Dr Juergen Wastl and Kathryn Weber-Boer from Digital Science – recognize the role social sciences can play to see that the UK’s competencies are maximized when it comes to overall R&I investment.

So what is really meant for the second ingredient to be “critical for good policy development”? Using Dimensions data, the report’s authors can see not only how many publications in different research areas receive funding, but how influential they are by being cited in policy documents in the UK. While many more STEM research projects are funded, around 3% of these end up being cited in policy documents, but for social sciences this rate doubles to 6%. Furthermore, when both STEM and social sciences are included in a funded research project, the rate increases by another 50% again to 7.5%.

In other words, funded research in social science is more likely to influence policy than STEM research in relative terms, and both combined even more so. Furthermore, the ‘translation rate’ from grants into publications and then into policy documents is higher for social science research than for STEM.

An additional impact can be seen in the chart below, which shows the number of policy documents per grant category (on the left of the chart) and the per publication category (in the middle), but with the fields of health sciences and biomedical and clinical sciences removed. What we can see is that policy documents in every category cite grants and publications produced in the others. Perhaps most importantly, nearly half of UK policy documents from 2012–2022 cited on social science-related or joint combined social science grants.

Funded research in social science is more likely to influence policy than STEM research in relative terms, and both combined even more so.

Case study

An example of how this has worked in practice is from the pressing issue of climate change, where the UK-based Centre for Climate Change & Social Transformations (CAST) investigates systemic and society-wide transformations that are required to address climate change. By researching and understanding the social transformations that are necessary to develop a low-carbon society, CAST can have a huge impact on affecting the behaviors of citizens, perhaps even more than science-based solutions whose impact might be minimized if not adopted by the population at large.

Next Time

The next ingredient is… Social science underpins smart and responsible innovation.

The post In the spotlight: Social sciences’ second key ingredient for research success appeared first on Digital Science.

Digital Science was recently involved in the release of a major new report from the Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS) on social science research and its potential contribution to UK research and innovation. Titled ‘Reimagining the Recipe for Research & Innovation’, the report details four key ‘ingredients’ that make up the ‘secret sauce’ for success by combining social science research with traditionally better-resourced STEM subjects.

But is there more to the report than just a clever metaphor? Below and over the next three weeks, we take a quick look at the report’s findings and, perhaps more importantly, the methodology behind the study, which used Dimensions data to understand the research landscape. Because Dimensions is the world’s largest collection of linked research data with over 140 million publications, it is a rich source of information on the impact of social science research.

Enabling whole-systems thinking

The AcSS report aimed to better understand the UK’s research and innovation (R&I) position, which is currently in a state of transition. Overall, the report argues that investment in R&I in the UK lags behind its competitors, despite the regard its higher education sector enjoys. The authors – which include Dr Juergen Wastl and Dr Kathryn Weber-Boer from Digital Science – seek to identify the role social sciences can play to ensure the UK’s position is optimized when it comes to R&I investment.

The first ingredient in the mix is for the social sciences to enable ‘whole-systems thinking’. What does this mean? The focus here is on innovation and entrepreneurship, and how social science can enable a better understanding of system capabilities such as economies, institutions, skills or culture. These contexts shape how enterprises in the UK can develop; being able to read them and make the right investment decisions on the back of it is a key part of a successful and dynamic economy.

The authors feel this point needs emphasizing as too often the social sciences are seen as a handbrake by contributing to ‘ELSIfication’, ie. stressing ethical, legal or societal implications (ELSI) in a given situation. However, that perception is questioned by the report which points to some key advances made in STEM research – such as in artificial intelligence (AI) and trustworthy autonomous systems (TAS) – where the level of expertise in these and related areas in social sciences in the UK far outpaces that of STEM. There is a huge untapped, advanced resource for STEM that would benefit R&I development if the two areas collaborated.

“…not only can social sciences improve STEM research and technological innovation by understanding the contexts they exist within, but they can also offer significant ‘value add’ when it comes to taking scientific breakthroughs into the society we live in.”

Case study

An example of the type of collaboration envisaged by the authors is given with the story of Professor Lucie Cluver in South Africa (University of Oxford and University of Cape Town), whose work on the impacts of AIDS showed that offering welfare payments to young orphaned girls meant they were less likely to seek older boyfriends who might, in turn, infect them. Understanding the complex social, environmental and psychological impacts of the disease has therefore provided an effective way to reduce infections above and beyond any STEM research into AIDS itself.

What we can see here is that not only can social sciences improve STEM research and technological innovation by understanding the contexts they exist within, but they can also offer significant ‘value add’ when it comes to taking scientific breakthroughs into the society we live in – above and beyond the checks and balances of ensuring ethical and legal parameters are maintained. The report is also keen to stress the relative superiority UK research enjoys in the social sciences, and how this can benefit STEM research as a whole when it comes to its impact on society.

Next Time

The next ingredient is… Social sciences are critical for good policy development.

The post In the spotlight: Social sciences’ first key ingredient for research success appeared first on Digital Science.

Last month saw the latest Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2024 published to the usual fanfare of marketing (from highly ranked universities) and criticism (from disdainful academics and commentators). Few things get educators riled up and divided like university rankings, the definitive wedge issue of academia. But this year, the rankings have been published in the shadow of a different set of alternative voices from the BRICS countries; one that could change the face of university rankings globally.

What are university rankings for? Originally, they were conceived as a way to provide a systematic list of institutions dependent on certain criteria that would be of value to potential students and their parents making one of the biggest decisions of their lives. As the father of a 19 year old, I have just gone through this painful process, with conversations something like this:

CHILD: I want to go to X University

ME: But what about Y University – the grades are lower for admission, it’s a great place to live, and the course offers a wide variety of options in your third year?

CHILD: I want to go to X University. It’s better than Y. It has prestige.

ME: How do you know?

CHILD: It says in those rankings.

ME: But they are based on irrelevant criteria, cover research more than undergraduate studies, and are completely disowned by the academic community!

CHILD: (shrugs) I still want to go to X University

Needless to say, there was no discussion about alternative ways to weigh up universities’ relative merits, but if they had it might have been useful to reflect on events in July 2023 where a meeting of education ministers from BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – declared war on existing university rankings, and committed themselves to developing a new one. 

Their reasoning was based on their objection to the cost of participating in such rankings and the effect they had on research culture in universities. While a timeframe and further details have yet to be announced, it has long been felt by many universities in Global South countries that playing the rankings game was not worthwhile, as it sacrificed research norms such as collaboration and sharing. Furthermore, many academics can get drawn into trying to publish research in certain journals in order to ‘score’ more highly for their institution – journals that may not typically publish methodologies they or their research cultures would normally utilize. We have, then, systems in place where rankings for both universities and the journals their academics publish in dominate the higher education agenda. 

Criticism

University rankings have not been around as long as some may think. The US News & World Report first published its US college rankings in the early 1980s, followed in the early 2000s by Times Higher Education (THE). Several other rankings have also sprung up in the meantime at international and national levels, meaning that prospective students have never had more choice in terms of data and rankings to support their decision.

Providing more data to improve decision-making is usually a good thing, but the flip side is that such is the power of the rankings that universities are tempted to chase ranking points rather than focus on their core mission. In his book Breaking Ranks , former university administrator Colin Diver charts the rise of rankings and how they can persuade applicants to zero in on pedigree and prestige, while inducing HEIs to go for short-term gains. Not only does this rig the system, Diver also argues it reduces diversity and intellectual rigor in US colleges.

Looking at this problem more globally, a panel discussion entitled ‘University Rankings: Accept, Amend or Avoid?’ was convened  at the STI Conference in Leiden in The Netherlands (https://www.sti2023.org/) in October 2023. In establishing the panel discussion, the conference detailed events that had led up to the inclusion of this topic at the highly regarded conference on science, technology and innovation indicators. Just in the prior 12 months these involved the creation of an international coalition of stakeholders including a commitment to avoid use of university rankings in the assessment of researchers; a new initiative for HEIs called ‘More Than Our Rank’; the Harnessing the Metric Tide review of indicators, infrastructures and priorities for UK responsible research assessment; Yale University withdrawing from the US News & World Report Law Rankings, followed by several medical schools doing something similar.

Speaking on the STI Conference panel, UK-based research assessment expert Lizzie Gadd commented on the move by BRICS education ministers. Speaking on, Dr Gadd saying: “The BRICS states are expressing their dissatisfaction with the well known university rankings (THE,QS etc) due to these favouring the Global North. However, their chosen response of developing an alternative ranking based on qualitative inputs will only be effective if it displaces the existing dominant rankings in those regions. This is unlikely given previous efforts in this direction have not had this effect”.

Case study

So, thinking of the BRICS countries and many other commentators in this: when combined together, the domination of English language in research journals, Western-dominated university rankings, Western research paradigms and Western-located publishers works against authors from Global South countries, creating a form of hegemony that has been difficult to break down for decades. But how do these phenomena manifest themselves?

Back in 2010, I published an article with one of the Editors I worked with in academic publishing on the impact of the research assessment programs in the UK (REF), Australia (ERA) and New Zealand (PBRF). We interviewed academics from all three countries and asked them if they felt they were influenced in their research choices by the systems they worked under. Sure enough we found that they did, with impacts felt on lower-ranked journals who did not receive submissions in favour of higher-ranked titles.

In other words, attempts to rank or score universities in terms of their research leads to some of those universities or individual researchers impacted by those attempts to fundamentally change their approach. More insidious is how research itself is determined by a relatively narrow band of publications both for academics to publish in, and identified as ‘top’ research. For business schools, inclusion in the Financial Times Top 100 is marketing nirvana, with the potential to increase the number of MBA students (and therefore revenue) as well as the prestige of their institution. This ranking is derived in small part by the FT50, a well-established list of business and management journals that has hardly changed for decades. 

The result? Not only is it limiting for academics who are tasked with publishing in those journals as part of their commitments to their universities, it also limits what is regarded as the best examples of research in a certain area. In a study I co-authored on impact assessment, we used an AI tool to identify those business and management journals which included the most research relating to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Of the top 50 with the most related content, just one was also in the FT50. 

Identifying progress

So can these fractures caused and maintained by Global North-dominated university rankings be healed? There are green shoots that, if able to flourish, could help turn things around. The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) has gained significant traction among stakeholders in the last decade, and the work of Dr Gadd and others at the STI Conference have inspired many universities to turn their back on rankings in favor of more balanced assessment methods. For example, at the end of September the University of Utrecht declared it had withdrawn its involvement in the THE rankings, citing that such rankings placed too much stress on university competition, not collaboration; the difficulty in scoring the quality of an institution as complex as a university, and the use of some questionable methodology. 

Progress is also being made through representation of more impactful data points in research platforms. For example, with data on nearly 140m publications, Digital Science’s Dimensions enables access to publications from a wide range of research outputs outside the Global North context, as well as content not in the English language. With translation becoming easier thanks to advances in AI, access to non-English content opens up a huge depth of opportunities for researchers the world over.

In addition, using Dimensions database researchers can identify how studies relate to the SDGs using a specific filter, or order articles based on their influence outside academia with Altmetric. Other platforms are also adding wider functionality that means citations – and specifically the Impact Factor from Web of Science – are no longer the only means of filtering research outputs.

Practical uses for this functionality include a recent report from THE, Prince Sultan University and Digital Science where for the first time Global South-oriented data was used in analyzing impact, as well as research integrity data now included in the DImensions database. The analysis in the report showed there was a significant gap between higher- and lower-income nations in regards to SDG-focused research. However, it was evident that there was growing SDG research in lower-income countries over the past 15 years or so, with some increases in collaboration within those regions.

University rankings providers are then listening to the need for wider representation in their data, with THE now also providing its Impact Ranking which has three Global South universities in its latest Top 20 and only one from the US. Other rankings providers are also widening the context of what they are evaluating, so while the methodological problems may persist of what can or cannot be ranked effectively, at least the focus of this activity is not squarely on prestige and performance.

Paradigm shift?

These developments help move the dial away from the dominance rankings have had on many university agendas, but may not be enough to engender the paradigm shift away from defining a ‘good’ university as one that simply satisfies a narrow set of criteria. What may be required is a concerted effort from funders, researchers, policymakers and universities themselves to follow a different path that instead celebrates the diversity of global research and different higher education approaches. 

We saw in an earlier piece in the Fragmentation campaign by Dr Briony Fane how an increase in focus in collaborative pharmaceutical research on the Global South was growing and that was where the biggest need was for medicines and other interventions. For all sorts of reasons, a fragmented research world has bad outcomes for huge swathes of the global population. Similarly, the fragmentation created by university rankings has impacted much of the developing world, which is why the BRICS countries have been moved to try and do something about it. Another ranking may not be the way to go about it, as it will do little to reduce fragmentation and its effects. Universities across the world need to collaborate more in research and meeting global challenges to bridge the divides between them, not compete for more meaningless points on a ranking. 

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Predatory journals can be identified as deceptive and often fake, giving the appearance of legitimate peer-reviewed journals. In researching my book The Predator Effect on the subject, I found the whole practice irredeemably rotten, and the very antipathy to the notion of trust that glues together the research ecosystem on which we depend. A predatory journal is what happens when every element of trust is corrupted in the pursuit of knowledge: research is not done thoroughly; authors are deceived; peer review is ignored; outcomes reduced to box-ticking exercises. 

The existence of predatory publishers was first discussed 15 years ago in 2008 by Gunther Eysenbach in the article ‘Black Sheep Among Open Access Journals and Publishers’, and Jeffrey Beall first coined the term ‘predatory journal’ in 2010. The use of language such as ‘predator’ and ‘black sheep’ has perhaps added a hint of intrigue around the activity, yet predatory publishers are not modern day pirates or Robin Hoods. It was estimated in 2020 that over $100m a year was being lost to predatory publishers, much of it from funders. And that’s not to mention wasted publications of good research that are stigmatized in predatory journals, or questionable research that has been cited but not validated by peer review.

Is AI the answer?

Two recent pieces published by Digital Science CEO Daniel Hook have addressed the need for skilled prompt engineers to develop Generative AI solutions successfully, and how early AI Art is having issues with some seemingly simple instructions and bias. From these, we can see that AI still has a way to go to engender our full trust, nevertheless it has produced some transformative illustrations of its potential value. But could it prove an antidote to the predatory publishing problem, and thereby increase trust in the publishing process?

When we think about the predatory journal issue, given the ability of Large Language Models (LLMs) to generate convincing text at zero cost to the user, this threatens the business model of the deceptive publisher. There are only a few studies into the motivations of authors who publish in predatory journals, but those that have looked at the question broadly identify them as either being unaware or unethical. While a naïve author may still publish in a predatory journal thinking it is legitimate, an unethical one may weigh up the expense and risk of knowingly doing so against the cheaper and potentially less risky alternative of using Generative AI. 

For example, imagine you are an unethical author and just want to get a publication in a recognized journal, and are willing to take some risks to do so, but unwilling to actually write a real paper yourself. Publishing in a predatory journal is an option, but it will cost a few hundred dollars and only gives you a publication in a journal few people have heard of, so significant risk for minimal reward. However, if you ask an AI to write you a paper and then make some tweaks, you might get it published in a better journal for no fee (assuming you take the non-open access route). With AI-checking software still in its infancy, an unethical author may decide that using an AI is the most effective course of action, hoping it escapes detection and is accepted. And of course, they can much more easily increase their output using this option. So as we can see, an unintended consequence of Generative AI could be to reduce demand for predatory journals, effectively disrupting their business models.

Trust still the victim

While this mitigates the success of bad actors in the publishing field, however, it may only do so at the risk of further impacting the already growing problem of plagiarism and paper mills in mainstream academic publishing. Recent large-scale retractions have revealed an iceberg of ethical concerns as a result of paper mills, with many more problems being revealed as investigations become better equipped at spotting fake publications. But this is all after the fact. For the sake of science and scientific communications, we need to increasingly look for trust, and not rely on old faiths where trust was taken for granted.

So, what might trust look like in a post-AI world? One example would be the new Dimensions Research Integrity solution, which enables you to identify Trust Markers across a researcher’s or an organization’s academic outputs. Trust Markers are verifiable elements recorded in a publication that represent the transparency and reproducibility of scientific research. As new technology such as LLMs and Generative AI grow in influence, previous bad actors such as predatory publishers may be diminished. However, new challenges to trust and research integrity in scholarly communications will replace them, and knowing what trust in research is and where to find it will only become even more important.

Dimensions Research Integrity

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