Tag: research

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Proving My Academic Contributions

While I am not a medieval scribe, I have occasionally written or contributed to a journal article, book chapter, or presented in an academic setting over the past thirty years.  As such, information regarding my “academic writings”, are scattered to the four winds as I never thought I would be working on a Ph.D.  As such, I spent the past few weeks assembling the materials to prove that I am competent and to get my doctoral points approved.

(My home office is not this organized!)

To do this, I started organizing my “academic writings”.  Initially, I turned to Google Scholar, which searched a lot of publications, many of which I would not call scholarly, such as my writings while at Institute for Trade and Transportation Studies, such as blog posts, working papers, newsletters, and general reports.  Most of my articles and academic writings were posted correctly.

I then discovered ResearchGate and created a similar account.  Many of the same listings were there, in addition to a few more.  (Again, there is no distinction between peer-reviewed articles, presentations, working papers, etc., so these are not necessarily academic writings.  I created a Scopus Account, which did focus on academic writing; however, I had to request Scopus to correctly link some articles to my account, which they did when asked.

Finally, I set up an ORCID account, documenting my academic writing in yet another format.  I did link this to my Antwerp Student account.  (I also need to make sure ORCID is linked to the review work at TRB, something I failed to do in the past.  Also, I probably should be reviewing more peer reviewed documents, as these are a great source of understanding current thinking on a topic!)

What did I learn in the process?  Not all things are considered academic, nor are all things captured accurately. (And there are a few Bruce Lamberts who have published academic articles!) Some papers have been lost to the sands of time, but it is nice to see that others remember some of what one accomplished over the years.  

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Why Does Adopting New Information Take So Long?

do we know the question?

As a researcher, I have often heard people lament, “We studied this in the past and nothing was done”, or “Why are we not using this approach”, or some variation concerning the fact that data and information are not being used after the being developed, purchased, or studied.  The question is that we think, using our crystal ball, we have built a masterpiece, and wonder why people don’t adopt our insights.  We often forget that this “knowledge” could be slow to be adopted by others for many reasons.

Failure of adoption:

  • The first is simply the WHY?  Sometimes when doing research we understand more about the question that the person who needs the answer.  So while we prepare our work, we forget our client will only use what they can understand with some level of confidence.  How often have we seen a more senior person misspeak based on information not properly summarized for them?
  • Secondly, there remains the ever consuming “tyranny of the urgent”, in that the research is needed in a timely manner, but the research is not needed beyond the “now”.  The reasons can vary from staff turnover, policy change, new leadership, the findings were not what was expected, to a thousand different reasons.  Furthermore, data is perishable, something that is often forgotten by the researcher, but not the client.
  • Thirdly, the experts may not agree with your opinions.  My wife is a fan of Downton Abbey, and during season 3, Sybil Branson died after childbirth.  The tragedy was there were two doctors arguing over her treatment, and the older doctor stated to the other doctor he is to not interfere.  In many ways, we can find people with good intentions failing to achieve an expected outcome because they are using older models from the past.  They remain uncommitted to learn, and without the application of new information, their working knowledge could, and does, fail, in providing actionable insights, or even providing the wrong information.  Presenting this expert with new information may only lead them to become more entrenched to their position.
  • Finally, our research may not actually answer the question being asked!

I suspect the following challenges will remain with us for a long time, based on  NCHRP Active Implementation: Moving Research into Practice, posted at http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/nchrp/docs/NCHRP_ActiveImplementation.pdf.

For the research community, the ghost of people not adopting our great ideas haunts the adoption of our “great efforts”.  But we must understand what the client may do with the research once it has been delivered, which may depend upon how we communicate before, during and after the research process!