Five open access books that have impacted policy

Research-policy engagement has proven to be a challenge for both researchers and policymakers, in terms of getting research out there (organizational and structural barriers), and making sure research is translated out of academia-speak for policymakers to understand and utilize. Ironically, the very style that academics use tends to be tentative, using modal verbs to avoid suggestion of bias. This sort of writing isn't naturally convincing, so the data put forth must do all of the work and carry the weight of the intended communication.

Justin Parkhurst’s open access book, “The Politics of Evidence,” brings up another barrier for engagement, that of politics.

The abstract of Parkhurst’s book explains: “There has been an enormous increase in interest in the use of evidence for public policymaking, but the vast majority of work on the subject has failed to engage with the political nature of decision making and how this influences the ways evidence will be used (or misused) within political areas.”

His book has been cited in policy documents from four organizations, including the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Health Organization, the Overseas Development Institute, and the Publications Office of the European Union.  

In the last policy document of this list, published in July 2022 and titled “Assessing national institutional capacity for evidence-informed policymaking,” Parkhurst’s work is utilized as part of the document’s “guiding principles from the literature on evidence-informed policymaking.”

The foreword for this EU report states: “As policy issues become increasingly complex and interconnected and politics ever more polarised, robust institutions that ensure that scientific knowledge is mobilised, synthesised, translated for, and integrated into the policymaking process become increasingly relevant.”

The authors provide four guiding principles for evidence-informed policymaking, which include: transparency (“Clear and transparent processes to generate and assess evidence engender confidence in the findings”), quality and rigour, credibility and legitimacy (“what political scientists refer to as input/output/throughput legitimacy”), and trust, the first three of these taken directly from Parkhurst’s book.

Read the policy paper here, and the open access Taylor & Francis book here.

While “less than 5 percent of farmers across Asia, Europe, North America, and South America” are using automation on their farms, this is likely to grow substantially due to increases in costs for labor and chemicals, and a warming climate, which is reducing yields.

The policy paper, “The State of Food and Agriculture 2022: Leveraging agricultural automation for transforming agrifood systems,” addresses the potential for this revolution in farming, analyzing “the business case for adoption of digital automation technologies in different agricultural production systems across the world,” and “suggesting policies to ensure that disadvantaged groups in developing regions can benefit from agricultural automation and that automation contributes to sustainable and resilient agrifood systems.”

The 2022 FAO report explains that it “relies on four other background papers that summarize the evidence from literature and available data.” One of these is the open access Routledge book, “Transforming Agriculture in Southern Africa: Constraints, Technologies, Policies and Processes”. This 2019 book, which “draws on case studies from Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe,” was written with the “intention to be a valuable support for informing new policies and processes aimed at improving food production and security and developing sustainable agriculture in Southern Africa.”

Indeed, it succeeded, and is being used by the prestigious and influential FAO, whose extensive audience includes ”policymakers; donors; international organizations; academia; and journalists and researchers specializing in food security, agrifood systems, the environment and international development.”

Read the policy paper here, and the open access Taylor & Francis book here.

The proliferation of illnesses such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease is considered to be a major public health failure. According to the Pan American Health Organization, “growing rates of obesity, poor diets, and lack of physical activity, among other factors, have contributed to a more than three-fold increase in the number of adults living with diabetes in the Americas in the past 30 years.” And the CDC reports that, “in 2020, an estimated 523 million people had some form of cardiovascular disease (CVD), and approximately 19 million deaths were attributable to CVD; this represents approximately 32% of all global deaths and is an absolute increase of 18.7% from 2010.”

A 2023 WHO policy document, “A guide to tailoring health programmes: using behavioural and cultural insights to tailor health policies, services and communications to the needs and circumstances of people and communities,” takes a look at these largely preventable public health crises in order to find solutions.

The WHO paper explains: “Some of the most persistent public health challenges are dependent on human behaviour. These include, among many others, overuse of antibiotics, use of tobacco and alcohol, suboptimal uptake of vaccination and cancer screening, lack of pandemic or sexual protective behaviours, and low adherence to treatment plans for diabetes and cardiovascular disease. These challenges place a weighty burden on health systems and on the health and well-being of individuals. They call for evidence-based action that draws on an understanding of these health behaviours and the cultural context in which they take place, and on engaging with those affected.”

This document cites the open access book, “Arts-Based Methods for Decolonising Participatory Research,” as a source of guidance on research methods “appropriate for behavioural and cultural insights.”

What exactly is participatory research? And what does it mean to 'decolonize' such research? The editors, Tiina Seppälä, Melanie Sarantou, and Satu Miettinen, explain in their introduction what participatory research looks like: (it is) “research that supports the perspectives, needs and interests of the research participants in their place-based and cultural con-texts.” They continue: “Decolonising design, through practices and thinking, seeks to question dominant narratives and relationships of power that perpetuate delocalised and disembodied perspectives of the Global North/West and eliminate other ways of knowing.”

They refer to the writings of Kenyan author and academic, Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o, in order to explain how art can be used to work towards this decolonization: “fiction, drama and poetry (are used) as ways to reconnect with broken roots of the past: first, by looking at the past critically and, second, by helping  build healthy societies.”

You can continue reading about decolonizing research here.