Community-driven and social initiatives

Abstract

Concerns about the need for researchers to make an impact on society, by conducting community activities and providing solutions to social problems are not new. However, such values are increasingly gaining attention, and stakeholders are now more vocal than ever about such a need. This general topic is what motivated the development of this special issue on communitydriven and social initiatives. However, speaking of the social impact of research might be problematic. As Smit and Hessels (2021) put it, impact implies the evaluation of the resulting presence of intended changes and hence they prefer using the term social value, which may be more open to also consider intangible results, such as helping to deepen our understanding of a given social phenomenon. Indeed, this could be the most reasonable way to look at this, because not every worthwhile contribution will have tangible outcomes that can be precisely measured, particularly not in short periods of time, which is the main issue involved in trying to measure the social impact of research. I also believe that most researchers, despite their best efforts in proposing solutions to social problems, may find it especially difficult to make a lasting contribution to society through their research, particularly if there are no appropriate mechanisms and resources for implementing and replicating their experiences, or to influence policy-makers and society at large to adopt their solutions. The latter is related to a difficult link to establish or even to restore, as the image of science and researchers in the public opinion is not in a particularly good standing nowadays. Hence, social stakeholders’ willingness to reach out to scientists for solving problems or their eagerness to receive and implement researchers’ solutions might be one of the most delicate issues we are facing. One thing would be attempting to solve a problem through research, another could be to find and provide a solution for a given case under a certain context, and yet another would be for others accept the application of a given solution. It would not be out of the realm of possibility, nor it would necessarily mean subscribing to conspiracy theories, that some social problems have not been solved, not because their solution is complex or because such solution has not been proposed before, but because there may be political and/or corporate interests that do not want these problems solved and they might be actively opposing or blocking their solution. In these cases, one might ask: why should researchers work on solutions that have already been found, or on those that others will not allow to apply? Are researchers being distracted under (apparently) good intentions while they are prevented from thinking about and working on problems emerging from their own research? Some social problems highlighted by stakeholders outside of the academia could fit into the following categories, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive: a) problems with known solutions but that are somehow not implemented and are still researched; and b) problems that should be solved and their solution might exist, but its implementation is being obstructed by some hegemonic powers. However, we can indeed conduct research with a clear social value and propose solutions, even if they are not further developed or massively implemented. Despite local or national mandates and globalist political agendas that might be out of touch with societies’ will, hopes, and their specific and more urgent needs, which may also ignore professionals’ own perspectives on how they can better contribute to alleviating the most pressing problems, a discussion such as the one presented by gathering the articles in this special issue might be more effective. This is because they represent bottom-up approaches that could be more democratic, as these colleagues presenting their research results here, despite the length of their careers, are still members of their own societies. When speaking about the social value of research, we might also find problems with the concept. Editorial