Workshop on Research Policy as an Agent of Change, Tucson, AZ, Fall 2003

University Of Arizona, Tucson AZ

Investigators

Abstract

As knowledge-based innovation assumes an ever more important role in contemporary societies there is a developing need to understand the role of research policy as an agent of change and to incorporate this understanding into social science research and public policy. On March 5, 2003, four investigators held a planning meeting in Washington, D.C. at the National Science Foundation (NSF) to explore the potential of this topic. This interdisciplinary group thought about different approaches and held discussions with NSF program officers. The deliberations resulted in a workshop plan, to consider ways to develop a research program. The goal of the workshop is to identify research priorities, infrastructure requirements, groups and organizations, including international organizations, which would invest in a program to study research policy as an agent of national and global change, as well as groups and organizations that would use the research stemming from it. The workshop will bring together scholars who study research policy from a variety of disciplines and perspectives, and constitute new networks that will study research policy as an agent of change. The workshop will also outline a series of small, follow-up workshops that will follow from and flesh out the core ideas and areas of the research initiative. This proposal is tied into a publishing program in which the "deliverables" from the workshops reach scholarly communities through such international, peer-reviewed journals as Research Policy, Science & Public Policy and the Journal of Technology Transfer and academic publishers with organized lists in science and technology studies (potentially including SUNY, Wisconsin, or Columbia). As the community of scholars who work on research policy problems evolves, its members will develop planning documents for NSF investment in this research area.