Elsevier CEO Kumsal Bayazit on Confidence in Research

Science and the research endeavor, alongside the herculean effort of healthcare professionals, have been the key to managing the Covid-19 pandemic. The global collaboration amongst researchers across borders, sectors, and disciplines created an efficient system that delivered extraordinary breakthroughs and rapid innovation that saved lives.

But the pandemic has also brought significant and enduring challenges for the research community, including increasing misinformation, politicization of science, and greater public scrutiny of research than ever before. While that scrutiny can drive further rigor and recognition, it can also increase pressure on researchers – to publish their work earlier and more often, to identify reliable knowledge amidst an ever-growing sea of information, to communicate their research to a more generalist audience as well as policy makers. The research process doesn’t lend itself easily to such pressures. It is rarely neat and definitive; indeed, it thrives on experiment and uncertainty, on nuance and complexity. Trust and confidence in research arevital for our collective ability to tackle the most pressing global challenges, from climate change to future pandemics.

As a scientific publisher and information analytics company, Elsevier has been privileged to play a role, for over 140 years, in helping ensure that quality research can be trusted, shared, and built upon to accelerate progress for society. In that spirit, we have partnered with leading organizations dedicated to advancing research and science to initiate a global dialogue about how confidence in research has been affected by the pandemic and to identify practical solutions that can support researchers. A critical part of this initiative is Economist Impact’s Confidence in Research: Researchers in the Spotlight study to understand the experiences of researchers, their own confidence in the research process, and what skills, support, or incentive structures they need in an increasingly complex and public-facing environment.

The findings reveal the extent and nature of the impact of the pandemic on the research community: the prevalence of information, which underscores the importance of peer review and transparent study design as markers of confidence; the shocking online abuse targeted researchers and the disheartening widened inequalities in access to funding and resources for early career researchers, women, and researchers in the global south. Notably, researchers are concerned by the tension between awareness and understanding. Public attention on research has increased, bringing greater recognition and appreciation of research, but public understanding of how research is conducted has not risen in parallel. The findings show a clear call to equip researchers with the skills they need to communicate research with more clarity and confidence has come through in this study loud and clear.

Thanks to the invaluable input of our expert partners, countless academic leaders, and early career researchers around the world, Economist Impact has surfaced a range of potential interventions that can help address these new challenges faced by the research community. We believe this report can be a helpful stimulus as all stakeholders in research come together to turn recommendations into action. At Elsevier, we are committed to supporting the research community to tackle these challenges.

I would like to thank Economist Impact, SenseAbout Science, our global thought partner, all our regional convening partners, Economist Impact’s Global Advisory Board and Elsevier’s Global Expert Panel, and the thousands of academic leaders, scientists, and researchers who lent their time and invaluable perspectives to this important collaboration.

The pandemic has transformed the scientific endeavor in many ways, giving it greater prominence and recognition but also creating higher expectations around pace and certainty. The urgency of the global health crisis spurred open science and data sharing, with rapid assessments resulting in quick breakthroughs that saved millions of lives and made household names of previously unknown scientists. Researchers also took to social media in greater numbers to share findings, collaborate across disciplines and help unpack the complexities of the pandemic to a concerned public.

For researchers, heightened expectations have brought challenges as well: navigating huge quantities of information, finding relevant research, knowing what can be relied upon and tying together quality insights has become harder for researchers. The practice of science is complex, it can be messy; research is about experimentation, testing and refining hypotheses — yet the public, policymakers and the media increasingly want certainty, simple stories and clear conclusions.

Dr Hugues Chenet, honorary Senior Research Associate at the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources and Scientific Collaborator at the Chair of Stress Test, hosted by the Ecole Polytechnique de Paris, highlights the necessity and challenge of considering a variety of audiences when communicating contemporary research:

I think the question of being understandable by a broader public is primarily a question of ‘translation layers.’ Whatever the complexity or abstraction of a research work, a dedicated effort should be given to make the outcome multi-layered. From the one-line simple explanation for kids (really — they’re the next researchers or users of our research!) to the very specific details only a handful of peers will be interested in. The middle layer for the broader public and media is sometimes what will get more traction, especially on issues widely shared such as climate change. This can be frustrating, as the specificity and ‘value added’ by the research may be missed or hidden.

Multi-layered communication is a new demand on researchers and a skill that doesn’t always come naturally. Julia Bingler, a doctoral researcher at ETH Zurich, shares her advice for those wanting to produce quality research with impact in the post-pandemic world:

Listen to the broader public to understand which topics are pressing and unsolved. If you identify a question that is relevant to the general audience, people will listen to what you say later on about the results. Always ask yourself the “so what?” question, not only at the very end of a paper when you conclude with the implications.

What helped me a lot was working for two years outside academia before I started with my PhD. In retrospect, I realized that this enabled me to understand two communities and translate what I did in research to people working on completely different daily tasks.

What remains unclear is the lasting impact increased public attention will have on how researchers conduct and communicate their research. Whatever its eventual influence, Elsevier wants to work with researchers to help them in this changing landscape and to identify potential solutions that can support the research community in a way that ultimately improves confidence in research.To this end, over the past year we have been working in partnership with leading organisations dedicated to advancing research and science to initiate a global dialogue about how confidence in research has been affected by the pandemic and to identify practical solutions that can support researchers.

A key part of this has been Economist Impact’s Confidence in Research: researchers in the spotlight study, supported by Elsevier, which surveyed more than 3,000 researchers globally, across different career stages and academic disciplines, to understand their experiences, their own confidence in the research process, and what skills, support or incentive structures they need in this increasingly complex and public-facing environment.

In collaboration with Economist Impact, Sense about Science and our regional convening partners (see below), Elsevier convened a series of roundtables, attended by leaders from academic and science institutions, established as well as early career researchers in China, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, the UK and the US.

Throughout, we sought the guidance of a Global Advisory Panel convened by Economist Impact, and a Global Expert Panel, brought together by Elsevier, of representatives from across the research ecosystem, including diverse geographies, backgrounds, types of institutions, NGOs, think tanks, policy-making organizations and editors. These experts interrogated the findings of the survey and, crucially, contributed views on where action and intervention are most needed to help researchers. These extensive inputs, insights and recommendations have been written by Economist Impact in the final report, published on 8 November 2022.

We believe this report can be a helpful stimulus as all stakeholders in research come together to turn recommendations into action.Ensuring that quality research can accelerate progress for society is at the heart of what we do at Elsevier, and we are committed to supporting the research community to tackle these challenges.