A population overwhelmed

Another concern raised by Dark’s book is that the media’s constant quest for sensationalism can frame information in a way that will literally scare people so much they become too overwhelmed to think about the topic. I can give a real-life example from my own experience to illustrate how this can happen. I have a particular aversion to seeing photos of animals that have been hurt or killed. Some of my acquaintances and organizations I follow have strong feelings about stopping animal cruelty and so they post images on Facebook. Seeing these I immediately scroll away from the images, making me much less likely to pay attention to the issue; the irony is that I feel strongly about protecting animals, wildlife and nature. In the studies I cited by Font & Hindley and Mayer & Smith, people were similarly hopeless and therefore did not take action, and in some cases, they contributed to the problem.

Not only is the public burdened with trying to navigate the treacherous waters of the media, Dark points out, but they are also supposed to “assume the roles of citizen, politician, scientist, and saviour of the planet”. It's an impossible task really, because as Dark adds, society has become so "transfixed on the need for specialisation, that it is no longer expected that the layperson comprehends a single field of it". This is how we find ourselves in the situation we’re in, where misinformation reins and “the truth is infinitely flexible” (Dark).

Combatting climate change: what's in it for me?

Dark asserts that: “Politicians base their decisions on the costs and benefits they will incur as a consequence  of  their  decisions.” We find that regular people do the same, like the tourists in  Font & Hindley’s study who felt bad, but still felt they deserved a trip, even if it was damaging to the environment. The winning strategy for behavior modification points at making environmentalism personally beneficial, like how the Ipswich Town Football Club rewarded engaged fans and got them to align fandom with environmentalism. Another interesting point of Richard Baldwin’s study on that campaign was that while some of the respondents expressed doubt and distrust towards the government in their answers, they readily accepted the football club as a “trusted messenger”. While Baldwin acknowledges that one study by no means provides “unequivocal proof” that this sort of thing is effective, he asserts that it’s “a contribution to the growing evidence base” and that “more research effort should be directed towards identifying the contexts and mechanisms by which to remove the barriers that individuals face in adopting pro-environmental behavioural changes in order to achieve positive environmental outcomes.”

Dark also brings up that distrust of the powers that be as yet another roadblock in making change around environment-damaging human behaviors. He points out that: “The publics’ worldview of many forms of institutional power is characterised by scepticism. Moreover, there is widespread disenchantment with figures of authority; their motives, actions, and the power they wield. There is a compulsion to not only question their decisions but also their authority to make them.”

Joakim Kulin and Ingemarr Johansson Sevä specifically examined how trust towards the government (or lack thereof) affects attitudes in their study: “Who do you trust? How trust in partial and impartial government institutions influences climate policy attitudes”. Published in Climate Policy, their research using data from 23 European countries found that “individuals who are concerned about climate change are more likely to hold positive attitudes towards climate policies in high-trust countries, particularly where trust in impartial institutions such as the legal system and the police is high.”

Scientists are struggling to tackle real-world problems too

An eye-opening (pending peer review) study from our very own Taylor & Francis team (which includes Earth & Environmental Science Portfolio Manager Andrew Kelly, Director of Policy Victoria Gardner, and Research & Analytics Manager Anna Gilbert) investigated Earth and Environmental Science researchers and their attitudes towards research impact.  In this, one of the very first studies of its kind, 90% of respondents indicated that it was important they contribute to tackling real-world problems with their work or that they intended to do so in the future.

However, when it came down to it, just 21% stated that ‘contribution to tackling real-world problems’ was one of the most-important forms of impact that they were looking for from their research. So unfortunately we find that scientific researchers’ attitudes about changing the world in some ways mirror the general population’s attitude and response towards climate change. The main issue for these researchers is that their success is measured primarily by citations and publication venue – not by how much their research can change the world. So citations and publication venue become their ultimate focus.

Andrew Kelly had this to say: “There is a knowledge gap in understanding and communicating the link between highly focused projects and live policy issues, so laudable ambitions are being lost. From improved cognisance of how research is incorporated into decision-making, to rewarding and recognizing policy impact, publishers, funders and institutions, must make strides to incentivize and support researcher aspirations to affect real-world change.”

Kelly, Gardner & Gilbert’s (pending peer review) paper, “The disconnect between researcher ambitions and reality in achieving impact in the Earth & Environmental Sciences – narrowing the gap” from F1000 Research, offers a series of recommendations for policy makers, funders, publishers and institutions, on how to collaborate and encourage authors to narrow that gap. The study also documents new initiatives Taylor & Francis’ Earth & Environmental Sciences is undertaking, as editors and society partners introduce policy-impact statements over the next few months, along with holding a cross-stakeholder discussion forum exploring other appropriate structural ways of clarifying policy relevance (such as to particular SDGs). This group will be publishing a series of cross-portfolio special issues on policy-relevant topics, beginning with the policy priorities expressed in the European Commission’s Horizon Europe Missions to be published on World Earth Day 2022.

Additionally, Kelly, Dr. Joanna Depledge, CsAP Fellow, CEENRG Research Fellow and Former Editor of Climate Policy, and Dr. Sanna Markkanen, Research Associate at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, presented at the 2021 Sense about Science Evidence Week, with a presentation to UK Parliament about increasing public support for policies that address climate change. You can find more information about that here.

Mission Possible

Kath Burton, Portfolio Development Specialist for the Humanities, Taylor & Francis, is also on a mission to narrow the gap between researchers and policy. Her work addresses changing the role of researchers to become more involved with their communities, to develop a more inclusive and values-led publishing ecosystem. Bridging this gap is key, as so many of the studies referenced in this article found that community participation in world changing endeavors are absolutely imperative to individual participation.

The humanities are just as crucial to climate change mitigation as traditional science, as Dr. Joanna Depledge explained at the Academic Publishing in Europe Conference earlier this year: “Climate policy research and publication is inherently interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary… involving economics, politics, behavioral science, law, psychology, ethics, you name it… As Climate Policy editor I always insisted that the analysis be widely accessible to readers from all theoretical backgrounds, and none.”

In 2020 Burton spearheaded Taylor & Francis’ commitment to publicly engaged research by joining up with the National Humanities Alliance (NHA) “to identify and discuss model practices for publishing on public and publicly engaged humanities work in higher education”. This work is documented in a paper Burton has contributed to, along with Daniel Fisher of the NHA, and eight other scholars from universities from around the world, called Public Humanities and Publication: A Working Paper.

One of the paper’s main points is the importance of engaged scholarship, changing the process from a traditional one-way transfer of knowledge from the world of academia to the public, to a collaborative experience, where “higher education faculty and students partner with community members in the creation of knowledge”. With similar calls to action to those we see in Kelly, Gardner, and Gilbert’s study, the authors advocate the need for “research and institutional structures that support engaged scholarship”.

In their summary, Burton and Fisher explain: “public humanities work… serves the public good in both its processes and outcomes, directing the resources of the humanities to address society’s most pressing challenges.” The paper outlines four specific areas where they see challenges to making this change in academic publishing, noting that “while publicly engaged scholarship has proliferated, there remains concern among scholars about how this work is measured and credited to them in the context of the three traditional expectations for faculty promotion and tenure in the humanities: research, teaching, and service.”

The hope is that by building bridges between academia and communities, and taking away the image (and oftentimes practice) of academics in their siloed “Ivory Towers”, publishers and others can support researchers by changing the academic currency so their success can be measured, recognized, rewarded, and funded, in new and innovative ways, and real change can happen.