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Hillier, John K.; Saville, Geoffrey R.; Smith, Mike J.; Scott, Alister J.; Raven, Emma K.; Gascoigne, Jonathon; Slater, Louise J.; Quinn, Nevil; Tsanakas, Andreas; Souch, Claire; Leckebusch, Gregor C.; Macdonald, Neil; Milner, Alice M.; Loxton, Jennifer; Wilebore, Rebecca; Collins, Alexandra; MacKechnie, Colin; Tweddle, Jaqui; Moller, Sarah; Dove, MacKenzie; Langford, Harry; Craig, Jim

Demystifying academics to enhance university–business collaborations in environmental science

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  • Media type: E-Article
  • Title: Demystifying academics to enhance university–business collaborations in environmental science
  • Contributor: Hillier, John K.; Saville, Geoffrey R.; Smith, Mike J.; Scott, Alister J.; Raven, Emma K.; Gascoigne, Jonathon; Slater, Louise J.; Quinn, Nevil; Tsanakas, Andreas; Souch, Claire; Leckebusch, Gregor C.; Macdonald, Neil; Milner, Alice M.; Loxton, Jennifer; Wilebore, Rebecca; Collins, Alexandra; MacKechnie, Colin; Tweddle, Jaqui; Moller, Sarah; Dove, MacKenzie; Langford, Harry; Craig, Jim
  • Published: Copernicus GmbH, 2019
  • Published in: Geoscience Communication, 2 (2019) 1, Seite 1-23
  • Language: English
  • DOI: 10.5194/gc-2-1-2019
  • ISSN: 2569-7110
  • Origination:
  • Footnote:
  • Description: Abstract. In countries globally there is intense political interest in fosteringeffective university–business collaborations, but there has been scantattention devoted to exactly how an individual scientist's workload(i.e. specified tasks) and incentive structures (i.e. assessment criteria)may act as a key barrier to this. To investigate this an original, empiricaldataset is derived from UK job specifications and promotion criteria, whichdistil universities' varied drivers into requirements upon academics. Thiswork reveals the nature of the severe challenge posed by a heavilytime-constrained culture; specifically, tension exists betweenopportunities presented by working with business and non-optional duties(e.g. administration and teaching). Thus, to justify the time to work withbusiness, such work must inspire curiosity and facilitate future novelscience in order to mitigate its conflict with the overriding imperative foracademics to publish. It must also provide evidence of real-world changes(i.e. impact), and ideally other reportable outcomes (e.g. official status asa business' advisor), to feed back into the scientist's performanceappraisals. Indicatively, amid 20–50 key duties, typical full-timescientists may be able to free up to0.5 day per week for work with business. Thusspecific, pragmatic actions, including short-term and time-efficient steps,are proposed in a “user guide” to help initiate and nurture a long-termcollaboration between an early- to mid-career environmental scientist and apractitioner in the insurance sector. These actions are mapped back to atailored typology of impact and a newly created representative set of appraisalcriteria to explain how they may be effective, mutually beneficialand overcome barriers. Throughout, the focus is on environmental science,with illustrative detail provided through the example of natural hazard riskmodelling in the insurance sector. However, a new conceptual model ofacademics' behaviour is developed, fusing perspectives from literature onacademics' motivations and performance assessment, which we propose isinternationally applicable and transferable between sectors. Sector-specificdetails (e.g. list of relevant impacts and user guide) may serve astemplates for how people may act differently to work more effectivelytogether.
  • Access State: Open Access