With the increasing popularity of academic blogging, the emergence of Twitter as a tool for promoting and sharing scholarly resources, and the proliferation of open access journals, there are more ways for researchers to share their discoveries, and more ways for interested parties to learn about and engage with those findings, than ever before. A […]
Information Use & Influence
Scientific Communication and the Problems of Scale
I love to solve puzzles. It has been a fascination of mine ever since I was a child, and my thoughts were and are consumed by new stratagem to resolve any puzzle placed before me. I am fortunate, I guess, that as time goes on, new and more challenging ones keep emerging. I came to […]
The Difficulty and Necessity of Communicating Scientific Information: The Gardasil Story
The failure thus far of the Canadian government’s efforts to promote Gardasil, a vaccine against human papillomavirus (HPV), the leading cause of cervical cancer, carries important lessons for advocates of evidence-based policy-making. The Public Health Agency of Canada’s 2006 approval of Gardasil was the culmination of a policy-making process that prioritizes evidence over political concerns. […]
New EIUI Paper on the Necessity and Benefits of Interdisciplinary Research
The Environmental Information: Use and Influence (EIUI) research team’s new paper “Tracking the influence of grey literature in public policy contexts: The necessity and benefits of interdisciplinary research has been published in The Grey Journal (vol. 9, no. 2, 2013). As this paper notes: “The necessity of interdisciplinary investigation becomes clear when the complexity of […]
Suzuette Soomai and François Bregha win awards at the 2013 Sustainable Oceans Conference
Suzuette Soomai and François Bregha, two research students in the EIUI research team, were named winners of awards for papers presented at the recent 2013 Sustainable Oceans Conference. Interdisciplinary PhD student, Suzuette Soomai, won the Building Bridges award for her paper on “Understanding the Science-Policy Interface: Measuring Use and Influence of Information in Policy-Making,” and […]
Grey Literature in the Marine Sciences: Recognizing Its Importance, Retaining It for Canadians
We have been pursuing research on awareness and use of marine scientific information, especially grey literature, at the science-policy interface for several years and have been focussing on the significance of enablers and barriers to information use. Lately, we have become increasingly concerned about recent federal government decisions to substantially reduce the number of government […]
Media and Policy: Transition and Influence
Modern public policy is often influenced by the news media. Frequently we see policy issues either set aside or placed centre-stage depending on the ways in which they are covered in the media. This post will look at the role of news media and social media, specifically scientific, in the policy process, as well as […]
EIUI Gives Presentation to Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment Working Group
Bertrum MacDonald and Peter Wells gave a presentation about the Environmental Information: Use and Influence research initiative to the Working Group of the Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment, which met in Halifax on 5 March 2013. The presentation outlined the recent history of the EIUI initiative and, in particular, research undertaken collaboratively […]
Rules of Engagement: Interest Groups, Social Movements, and Citizen Consultation in Policy Development
The phrase “special interest” flies off the tongues of politicians and political pundits like a vicious epithet on the level of “international terrorist” or “Wall Street fat cat.” Interest groups are portrayed in the political discourse as inherently corrupt influence peddlers, sullying the purity of the democratic process with undue lobbying pressure and unseemly […]
Special issue of Marine Policy on Governing Marine Protected Areas guest edited by Elizabeth De Santo and colleagues
A special issue of the journal Marine Policy is now in press, guest edited by EIUI team member Elizabeth De Santo and her colleagues Peter Jones, Wanfei Qiu and Julian Clifton. writing business reports The special issue is entitled: Governing Marine Protected Areas: towards social-ecological resilience through institutional diversity. This study aimed to explore […]