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Beyond the ivory tower: Measuring and explaining academic engagement with journalists, politicians and industry representatives among Swiss professorss

Scholars from different theoretical schools have posited that in recent decades, science and society have moved closer together, and the concept of academic engagement has been proposed to capture one part of this approximation empirically. This study analyzes the academic engagement of individual s...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Rauchfleisch, Adrian, Schäfer, Mike S., Siegen, Dario
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8139464/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34019575
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251051
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author Rauchfleisch, Adrian
Schäfer, Mike S.
Siegen, Dario
author_facet Rauchfleisch, Adrian
Schäfer, Mike S.
Siegen, Dario
author_sort Rauchfleisch, Adrian
collection PubMed
description Scholars from different theoretical schools have posited that in recent decades, science and society have moved closer together, and the concept of academic engagement has been proposed to capture one part of this approximation empirically. This study analyzes the academic engagement of individual scholars towards politicians, industry representatives and journalists. It uses comprehensive survey data on Swiss professors from all disciplines, all the country’s universities and from associated research institutes. It assesses, firstly, the degree to which these professors have professional contacts to journalists, politicians and industry representatives. Secondly, it explains the extent of these contacts, using multi-level modelling that incorporates individual factors as well as organizational and institutional contexts. Our study shows that academic engagement is quite common with strong differences between disciplines. Furthermore, professors with higher academic productivity, positive personal attitude towards communication activities as well as a leadership position have more outside contacts. The gender and nationality of the professors, however, only play a role for some of the contacts with non-scientific actors.
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spelling pubmed-81394642021-06-02 Beyond the ivory tower: Measuring and explaining academic engagement with journalists, politicians and industry representatives among Swiss professorss Rauchfleisch, Adrian Schäfer, Mike S. Siegen, Dario PLoS One Research Article Scholars from different theoretical schools have posited that in recent decades, science and society have moved closer together, and the concept of academic engagement has been proposed to capture one part of this approximation empirically. This study analyzes the academic engagement of individual scholars towards politicians, industry representatives and journalists. It uses comprehensive survey data on Swiss professors from all disciplines, all the country’s universities and from associated research institutes. It assesses, firstly, the degree to which these professors have professional contacts to journalists, politicians and industry representatives. Secondly, it explains the extent of these contacts, using multi-level modelling that incorporates individual factors as well as organizational and institutional contexts. Our study shows that academic engagement is quite common with strong differences between disciplines. Furthermore, professors with higher academic productivity, positive personal attitude towards communication activities as well as a leadership position have more outside contacts. The gender and nationality of the professors, however, only play a role for some of the contacts with non-scientific actors. Public Library of Science 2021-05-21 /pmc/articles/PMC8139464/ /pubmed/34019575 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251051 Text en © 2021 Rauchfleisch et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Rauchfleisch, Adrian
Schäfer, Mike S.
Siegen, Dario
Beyond the ivory tower: Measuring and explaining academic engagement with journalists, politicians and industry representatives among Swiss professorss
title Beyond the ivory tower: Measuring and explaining academic engagement with journalists, politicians and industry representatives among Swiss professorss
title_full Beyond the ivory tower: Measuring and explaining academic engagement with journalists, politicians and industry representatives among Swiss professorss
title_fullStr Beyond the ivory tower: Measuring and explaining academic engagement with journalists, politicians and industry representatives among Swiss professorss
title_full_unstemmed Beyond the ivory tower: Measuring and explaining academic engagement with journalists, politicians and industry representatives among Swiss professorss
title_short Beyond the ivory tower: Measuring and explaining academic engagement with journalists, politicians and industry representatives among Swiss professorss
title_sort beyond the ivory tower: measuring and explaining academic engagement with journalists, politicians and industry representatives among swiss professorss
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8139464/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34019575
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251051
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