Background: Timely access to relevant and trustworthy research findings is an important facilitator of research use. But the relational aspects of evidence generation, mobilisation and use have been insufficiently explored. Aims and objectives: Our aim is to describe the strategic communicative and relational work of two intermediary organisations…

Calls for evidence-based policy often fail to recognise the fundamentally political nature of policy making. Policy makers must identify, evaluate and utilise evidence to solve policy problems in the face of competing priorities and political agendas. Evidence should inform but cannot determine policy choices. This paper draws on theories of…

Valorisation is at the centre of many debates on the future of academic research. But valorisation has largely become narrowly understood in terms of universities' economic contributions through patenting, licensing, spin-off formation and technology transfer. This emergent restrictive definition of universities' societal impacts is a worrying…

Specific reference is made in the Constitution of the United States to the need for protection of intellectual property rights. Later, Madison explored the problem again in the "Federalist" and in a letter to Thomas Jefferson. The present-day argument against protection of these individual rights is not directed against the government's…

Some authorities on technolgoy transfer feel that industry is not fully capitalizing on the inventive output of universities and nonprofit organizations. From the point of view of the government, the stakes are high. The magnitude of federal support of research and development in these organizations demands evidence of useful results if it is to…

Three broad statements summarizing nine axioms underlie a conceptualization of the character of behavioral and social research: (1) social and behavioral science is inherently reflexive, (2) ethics and epistemology are inseparable, and (3) the inherent complexity of behavioral and social phenomena must be reflected in the models developed to guide…

Dissemination in career and technical education does not simply disperse information, new products, new practices and materials, and new ideas designed to stimulate local change but does so in ways that promote its use. Federal efforts to promote dissemination of research-based information in education are: (1) deeply indebted to the agricultural…

The world needs a socioeconomic strategy--a set of interrelated policies that recognize that social and institutional changes at all levels of society are necessary to realize fully the technical and economic potential of new technologies. An assessment and dissemination of how different countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and…

The Diffusion of Appropriate Educational Technology in Open and Distance Learning in Developing Countries project was designed to determine awareness and use of educational technologies and communications media in developing countries, to identify factors constraining wider use of educational technologies by developing nations, and to explore…