Communicating to the Public

Since interdisciplinary research is often motivated by societal problems, researchers will want to generate practical policy advice in addition to scholarly contributions. These are two quite different sorts of output. Bergmann and Jahn (in Handbook of Transdisciplinary Research, 2008, 96) argue that they require different types of integration. Scholarly audiences may be most interested in integration at the level of theories and methods. Policy-makers will seek integration of diverse policy proposals. Ideally, of course, the first sort of integration should support the second. Bergmann and Jahn (2008) feel that very few interdisciplinary research projects succeed on both counts. The chapters in Repko, Newell, and Szostak, Case Studies in Interdisciplinary Research by Tayler, Connor, Szostak, and Henry and Bracy each strive to address the concerns of both scholars/students and policy-makers

It should be stressed here that the best way to communicate policy ideas to stakeholders and policy-makers is to involve them in a two-way conversation from the start.

Interdisciplinarians can also usefully ask themselves about the purpose of their public communications:

· If they are trying just to educate, then the key issue is establishing credibility.

· If they want to influence decisions then saliency becomes important (which involves among other things connecting generalizable and local research).

· If they are influencing a political negotiation, then questions of legitimacy arise.

William C. Clark, Thomas P. Tomich, Meine van Noordwijk, David Guston, Delia Catacutan, Nancy M. Dickson, and Elizabeth McNie. Boundary work for sustainable development: Natural resource management at the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2011. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10 They conclude that early scholarship on boundary work focused on the simplest problem, when one discipline tried to educate the public, but this should be viewed as a special case of a more complex interaction.