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I am writing in response to Paul Mundy's earlier comments about ensuring that clients receive the benefit of research findings. Whilst this original comment was chiefly concerned with agriculture, obviously this subject concerns many other disciplines. I work at the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex. We have a large number of teams at this institute working to ensure that the key findings of academic research reaches policy makers, politicians and NGO's in LDCs. These departments are id21, BRIDGE, Eldis, Livelihoods Connect, BLDS, and GDNet. I work for id21, a free development research reporting service funded by DFID. Our mission is to communicate development research findings to policy-makers and practitioners in a jargon-free and concise format through our online database of research highlights, email newsletters and printed journals. We produce research highlights and articles on subjects including food security, forced migration, conflict resolution, refugee education and many categories of health research. Whilst not all research will be featured in our output, the response we have received from people in developing countries is very encouraging. Over 20,000 subscribers receive id21's email bulletins, and the same number receive our 'Insights' publications. We also place a great emphasis in writing our summaries and articles in a jargon-free, easy to understand style. For more information on any of these services, please visit our websites: www.id21.org <http://www.id21.org/> http://www.ids.ac.uk/ids/info/index.html -----Original Message----- From: Paul Mundy [mailto:<address removed> Sent: 26 May 2004 12:51 To: <address removed> Cc: <address removed> Subject: Ensuring that clients benefit from agricultural research Colleagues: I'd like to return to the issue of ensuring that research findings reach the people who need them. Research institutes in the developing world put a lot of emphasis on publishing articles in scientific journals, and holding conferences and seminars. But the only people who can read the journals, or attend the conferences, are other scientists. Journals are mostly published in-house, so have very limited circulation, and are written in scientific jargon. Despite all the effort that goes into these journals and conferences, their direct contribution to development is close to zero. Whose job is it to translate from the research language into extension materials, mass media, and training courses? Research institutes tend to think this is the job of the extension agencies. But extension agencies simply do not have the capability to undertake this conversion process. The result is that a lot of good research ends up unused, sitting in desk drawers and on library shelves. Researchers, and research institutes, have little incentive to translate their findings into a form that normal mortals can understand. In Indonesia, for example, researchers are promoted according to a credit-points system. An article in a journal fetches 25 credits. An extension article yields a single credit. No wonder that researchers spend their time trying to split the findings of their latest series of experiments into as many separate journal articles as possible - instead of writing an overall piece summarizing the work in a form that extensionists and farmers might be able to use. Some research institutes train staff how to write for a popular audience. But they do little to help them find outlets for their work. Public awareness units of research institutions are rare, weak, and generally staffed by agricultural scientists rather than journalists or media professionals. Research institutions produce few publications aimed at extensionists, farmers or the public. They work very little with the mass media. Some suggestions for DFID: - Encourage national research institutions to reward researchers for translating research into everyday language. - Find ways to reward researchers for disseminating innovations, not just for developing them. - Put more emphasis on ensuring that research focuses on critical problems, and on ensuring that the solutions are implementable (and are implemented) by the people who need them. - Strengthen the units responsible for public awareness and extension liaison in research institutions. - Expand the target clientele for agricultural research to include NGOs and the private sector, not just extensionists and farmers. Paul Mundy development communication <address removed> www.mamud.com _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself with the new version of MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/ ============================================================= To send a reply to this message that goes to all list members, make sure that you send your reply to <address removed> To unsubscribe from this list, send an email to "<address removed>", with the message body: unsubscribe science-and-technology <your-email-address> This message is for the addressee only and may contain privileged or confidential information. If you have received it in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete the original. Any views or opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of IDS. Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9RE Tel: +44 (0)1273 606261; Fax: +44 (0)1273 621202 IDS, a charitable company limited by guarantee: Registered Charity No. 306371; Registered in England 877338; VAT No. GB 350 899914
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