Transfer in Social Sciences and Humanities: the traditional approach needs to be broadened
Last May 9th, there was a conference at the UAB Rectorate organised by the Xarxa AccessCat (also coordinated by UAB) with technical and research personnel that focused on the importance of knowledge transfer in the social sciences and humanities in terms of impact, social values, and the need to establish systems and resources for their institutional recognition.
The interventions made during the conference “Knowledge Transfer on Social Sciences and Humanities," both at talks and roundtables, showed the need for broadening the vision of the meaning of transferring knowledge when it comes to social sciences and humanities (SSH) and having a system that allows to collect all of this diversity, evaluate it with quantitative and qualitative agreed indicators, and recognise the researchers behind it. At the same time, it shows the wish of finding adequate terminology with which researchers find themselves comfortable, speaking of co-creation and co-construction of knowledge, of users, of impact, and of social value. To train and raise awareness among researchers themselves that what they are doing, often without realising it, is transferring their knowledge and having an impact on society. And, finally, that the researchers who want to transfer knowledge can count on having professional tools and institutions that recognise their singularity and can support them.
Javier Lafuente, UAB rector, opened the conference claiming “the fundamental role of social sciences and humanities in explaining the social impact of the university" and advocated for promoting the dialogue amongst disciplines to analyse phenomena and give answers “if we want to pave the way to a more inclusive, sustainable, and collaborative science, one that is open and beneficial to society." To completely achieve this goal, “we must recognise and strengthen the transfer side of the social sciences and humanities, and it is mandatory that the criteria and methods of evaluation consider the particularities of these fields of knowledge.”.
On her part, Laura Arnal, general director for Knowledge Transfer and Society, called to break “false myths that turn out to be fatal” about the existing “glamorous” tech transfer and another considered to be “its poor sister." Arnal highlighted the “big, transversal impact” that knowledge transfer in the SSH has on many aspects of society and the need for “adapting the current system to make anyone researching in these fields feel at home." The system has madurated and now has the “necessary elements” and an “impregnated culture” to support it, she declared. The new Catalan law of science claims the deployment of a new model to evaluate the impact of the results of research in social fields. “It is a commitment in which we all have to work together," she concluded.
Creation of social value
The speaker of the conference, Julia Olmos, professor of Business Organisation and member of INN4ALL, the Innovation, Science and Society research group of the University of Valencia, began her talk by pointing out that it is necessary not to put a "restrictive approach" when we talk about transfer, equating it to commercialisation, but to broaden the focus to be able to name what is being done in SS&H, which is to bring knowledge to society, creating a social value (which can also be economic), as is being requested by the European Union in its calls for proposals.
"There are problems when it comes to understanding or evaluating transfer," said the researcher, an expert in studying the social valorisation of research in SS&H, at the end of her explanation of the results of the analysis of the pilot project of the six-year transfer project promoted by ANECA in 2018, a call to which 16,000 applications were submitted, and of the EXTRA research project, in which they analysed 11,000 questionnaires conducted with researchers. Of the applications submitted to the pilot project, 43% were approved, 41% of which corresponded to the SS&H fields. The results showed a greater consensus in approving the most institutionalised and most consensual transfer activities (85% for spin-offs compared to 31% for publications and dissemination); a great disparity of results between disciplines; and a predominantly male profile, over 50 years of age and from the highest academic scales. The second project showed that SS&H sector does not generally collaborate with companies, but with other types of actors, such as public administrations, non-profit institutions and associations.
"There are many ways to reach society and there are many and diverse social agents," said Julia Olmos, who stressed the importance of designing "calls for proposals that are fair for all areas of knowledge" and of raising awareness among the group with workshops and training. In addition, institutions have to know, guide and see the potential of their research groups to support them and design facilitating processes and procedures. "Conferences like this one should allow us to move towards broad approaches where all disciplines have a place," concluded the researcher.
Anna Matamala, coordinator of the AccesCat Network, organiser of the conference, mentioned in her conclusions terms and concepts that had emerged throughout the meeting and that she considered key, including broad vision, co-construction or co-creation, transformation, multidirectionality, link with the territory, recognition, contribution of value, language, indicators, social impact, multidisciplinarity and qualitative/quantitative evaluation.
Finally, Vice-Rector for Innovation, Transfer and Entrepreneurship Rosa Maria Sebastián thanked the organisers for the conference and pointed out the learning it entailed. "We have work ahead of us, both from the government and from the universities. We will continue this feedback we received today and that we had already begun in our UAB faculties. We have to become more involved with our researchers so that they can value their work and help them have an impact on the surrounding region," she concluded.