Engaging research in the digital university: A civil society perspective

Overview

Researchers and funders in the UK are increasingly recognising the links between user engagement with research processes/outputs and the impact of research for policy and practice. An emerging movement around ‘open scholarship’ has connected the use of digital resources (e.g. open access publications, blogs, wikis, podcasts, interactive data visualisations etc.) to new levels of openness in the production and communication of research with implications for accessibility, relevance and participation. Yet one of the paradoxes of the open research movement is that studies have focused primarily on the design and use of digital resources in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) with few attempts to understand engagement from the perspective of the public, commercial sector and especially civil society. This fellowship addresses this knowledge gap by examining the potential of open research resources to enhance engagement from the perspective of practitioners in Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in the UK’s International Development sector