Elsevier, a global leader in research publishing and information analytics, announced the launch of a global collaboration that will include new, independent research led by Economist Impact. The initiative aims to assess the drivers of confidence in research, examine how researchers have experienced the increased public attention on science during the pandemic, and the implications this has had on the academic research community. It is also looking at changes in the ways in which researchers communicate their findings.
A focus of the initiative will be a landmark global survey conducted by Economist Impact, experts in helping to identify critical and actionable insights of 3,000 researchers across Europe, North America, Latin America, Middle East, Africa, and Asia.
The insights will be published in a free report in Autumn 2022. It will be used to create a set of actionable commitments and recommendations that will support researchers in their efforts to advance knowledge that benefits society.
The initiative sees Elsevier partner with Sense about Science, which has pioneered wider engagement on the reliability of research internationally, to bring together world-renowned experts to advise and inform the collaboration via a Global Advisory Board tasked with shaping the primary research, and a Global Expert Panel that will drive the co-creation of actionable insights and recommendations to benefit the research community.
Elsevier is also working in partnership with leading science and research organisations in six regions: Chinese Association for Science of Science and Science & Technology Policy (China); Körber Stiftung (Germany); Japanese Association for the Advancement of Science (Japan);Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen - Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (Netherlands); Sense about Science (UK & global); and Research!America (US).
These organisations will bring unique perspectives from their respective countries, and co-host roundtables with Elsevier to explore the findings and discuss potential recommendations the collaboration will put forward.
The collaboration comes as Elsevier’s Research Futures report reveals that the most cited ‘red flags’ for researchers to engage with and trust research was the source of data being unclear (60%), the journal being of low quality (57%) and the research not being peer reviewed (55%). The report, which surveyed over 1,000 researchers globally, also found that the most stated challenges to effective communication of research were pressure to publish to advance your career (63%), the sheer volume of articles being published (51%), and the growing emphasis on demonstrating novelty in research (47%). Researchers also reported an increase in their use of sharing sites, academic community platforms, and publisher websites.
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