If you are a researcher who spends a lot of time on knowledge translation, what does your curriculum vitae (CV) look like? What should it look like? These are questions asked in a new study* by IKTRN members Laura Boland, Alison Hutchinson, Anita Kothari, Ian Graham, Dawn Stacey and others. They investigated how health researchers report research translation activities and impact in their academic CVs.
We spoke with Terry Campbell, Executive Director of Research Management Services at the University of Ottawa, to learn about her thoughts on this paper and her experiences with researchers reporting their knowledge translation work in their academic CV.
One of the article’s main findings was that “participants perceived employers do not value research translation and impact activities.” As an academic administrator, tell us what you think of this finding.
TC: That confirms my experience. Historically, academic research has been evaluated mostly on academic outputs such as peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations, and so I can see why participants would have that view. But that doesn’t mean that universities don’t think that knowledge translation is important, but they haven’t explicitly said it is important. In formal processes like tenure and promotion, very few universities have gone that far to be explicit in that.
In the described study, participants were health researchers. In your experience, are there differences in how researchers outside of health sciences report research translation activities and impact on their CVs?
TC: First of all, there are differences in terminology that other disciplines use. The social sciences and humanities tend to use the term “knowledge mobilization” and science and engineering talk more about “commercialization.”
For science and engineering, in some areas you see they are a little more standardized because they have defined metrics, such as new products. However, in other areas like science communication they don’t have standard metrics.
In the social sciences and humanities, I would say that they tend to have the same issues as health research in that there’s no clearly defined metrics that they report on. However, because they have a more general terminology they may feel freer in their CVs to talk about “outreach” and they include the work they are doing with other groups. Because they don’t have such a strict terminology of “knowledge translation” I think you see more of their knowledge mobilization activities throughout their CVs.
As an academic administrator, what have you seen done particularly well when researchers report research translation activities and impact on their CVs?
TC: I cannot say that I have seen many great examples. However, CVs that report knowledge translation activities particularly well tend to be framed according to how the researcher sees the benefits, rather than following the strict CV guidelines. The researcher flips it to say, for example, my committees included knowledge users, or my conference presentations were to knowledge users. They use the terms that are important and they structure their CV to actually demonstrate the impact.
The CV is a great communication tool but I think there are some deficiencies in the CV format that require people to go around it to really highlight their knowledge translation activities and impact. So it shows you something is wrong with the current CV format if everyone needs to do the same thing to work around it.
Have you seen any changes over time in how researchers are reporting research translation activities and impact on their CVs?
TC: Over time, CIHR has had more focus on knowledge translation and developed a more active knowledge translation program. CVs are a marketing tool for an external audience – you are trying to get a grant and so if the funder is saying knowledge translation is important then you will figure out a way to communicate it. It is the same thing internally – if it is important for promotion and tenure, then you will use your CV as a tool to best represent your skills.
Related to reporting research translation activities and impact in CVs, what could be improved?
TC: I think institutionally it would be good to agree on a format that could be used across the institution. The CV format would need to incorporate “knowledge mobilization” or “translation” and allow a broad enough definition that all disciplines could see themselves in it. Because then it would say, “this is important within our institution for researchers to be doing X, however they define X.” Then it is explicit and people will see “this is where I need to fill in the blanks.”
However, there is a limit with the term “knowledge translation,” because if we only use that term people that are in the non-health related disciplines don’t tend to see themselves in it.
Can you speak to the work that is currently being done at the University of Ottawa to recognize knowledge translation and knowledge mobilization activities?
TC: We have developed an institutional strategy over the last few years and one of the components of the institutional strategy is to change the culture to support knowledge mobilization. To develop this strategy the Vice-President of Research struck a committee at the university, including the Associate Vice President of Research, Vice Deans of Research across faculties, and some researchers with expertise and interest in knowledge translation and mobilization. We worked together to identify what type of strategy was important for the university and developed our plan. There are a number of different aspects in that strategy that I think are relevant to recognizing knowledge translation and mobilization:
First, we are actually embedding the importance of knowledge translation and mobilization at the institutional level and within the institution’s strategic plan and within our strategic research plan. I think it is really important that if you want to change a culture, you have to start from the top and go down. Second, we have launched some Knowledge Mobilization Excellence Awards, as well as Knowledge Mobilization Grants to University of Ottawa centres and institutes. At our Knowledge Mobilization Excellence Awards event, the President came and gave out the awards, the Vice President of Research was there, and we got a lot of good publicity for it, and this really created an interest. Finally, we are also now getting involved in a research project that will help us to identify what some of the barriers at the university are that hinder the recognition and rewarding of knowledge mobilization. In the fall of 2020 we will start working with individual faculties to get a grass roots perspective on what the barriers are that we need to remove.
Are you aware of what other institutions are doing to recognize knowledge translation and knowledge mobilization activities?
TC: We are part of a group of universities in Canada called Research Impact Canada and we are all involved in knowledge translation and mobilization activities at our institutions and so we share a lot of information on who is doing what. A report was done a few years ago on engaged scholarship about what universities across Canada are doing and how engaged scholarship has been integrated into the evaluation processes of universities. What it found is that there is really not much formal recognition in that area. While universities are starting to do things to recognize knowledge mobilization work, there is a lot more they can still do.
Like the University of Ottawa, a number of other Research Impact Canada members have knowledge mobilization awards and grants. I found it interesting that in this new publication many respondents indicated that they include awards and recognitions for their research translation activities – it shows that these university awards and grants will actually help people, at least indirectly, in their CVs.
As an academic administrator, do you find the table of suggested reporting approaches helpful?
TC: I thought the table was great because, in fact, when you were asking me about any examples of CVs that I have seen that are quite good, that is what they did. There were also a few suggestions that I had not really thought of. The table also made me think, as an institution, we could provide additional training to researchers on knowledge mobilization, including one on academic CVs and how to present the work you’re doing.
I think one of the main issues with knowledge translation and mobilization is we don’t have the same standardized metrics that we have for academic publications, citations, etc. Because we don’t have these metrics right now, we have no standardized collection of this type of information and so it is not readily available to evaluate people. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have it. If you start thinking about what you need to be capturing and how to capture it, then you can start collecting it as an institution and highlight it.
So where do you start? If you start from a researcher having the confidence to reflect it in their CV, then it is a great idea.
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*Boland L, Brosseau L, Caspar S, Graham ID, Hutchinson AM, Kothari A, McNamara K, McInnes E, Angel M, Stacey D. Reporting health research translation and impact in the curriculum vitae: a survey. Implement Sci Commun 1, 20 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s43058-020-00021-9