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      Engaging policy in science writing: Patterns and strategies

      research-article
      1 , * , 2 , 3 , 3 , 4
      PLoS ONE
      Public Library of Science

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          Abstract

          Many scientific researchers aspire to engage policy in their writing, but translating scientific research and findings into policy discussion often requires an understanding of the institutional complexities of legal and policy processes and actors. To examine how researchers have undertaken that challenge, we developed a set of metrics and applied them to articles published in one of the principal academic publication venues for science and policy— Science magazine’s Policy Forum. We reviewed each Policy Forum article published over a five-year period (2011–15), 220 in all. For each article, we assessed the level of policy content based on presence of a stated policy proposal or position and identification of the relevant policy actors and actions, and recorded attributes such as field of science, field of policy, number of references to legal and policy sources, number of authors from law and policy institutions, and number of citations. We find that a handful of science fields dominate publication frequency, but that all fields have produced publications with high policy engagement. Of the attributes, number of references to law and policy sources is correlated positively with level of engagement, whereas number of law and policy authors was fairly constant across all depths of engagement. Surprisingly, level of policy engagement was negatively correlated with the number of citations an article subsequently received. We offer possible explanations for these results and thoughts for authors, editors, and research institutions interested in facilitating robust engagement of policy in scientific writing.

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          Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science: Strains and Interests in Professional Ideologies of Scientists

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            How the news media activate public expression and influence national agendas

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              Redesigning Flood Insurance

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Formal analysisRole: InvestigationRole: MethodologyRole: Project administrationRole: Writing – original draftRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Data curationRole: InvestigationRole: MethodologyRole: Project administrationRole: VisualizationRole: Writing – original draftRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Data curationRole: MethodologyRole: Writing – original draftRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )
                1932-6203
                1 August 2019
                2019
                : 14
                : 8
                : e0220497
                Affiliations
                [1 ] Vanderbilt University Law School, Nashville, TN, United States of America
                [2 ] COMPASS, Silver Spring, MD, United States of America
                [3 ] Gund Institute for Environment, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, United States of America
                [4 ] Rubenstein School for Environment and Natural Resources, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, United States of America
                Indiana University Bloomington, UNITED STATES
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: COMPASS provided support in the form of salaries for author SP. The funder did not have any role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section. Additionally, this does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3866-733X
                Article
                PONE-D-18-04987
                10.1371/journal.pone.0220497
                6675390
                31369620
                9e26cd80-b106-42e0-985b-be1e7a5e41e9
                © 2019 Ruhl et al

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 14 February 2018
                : 17 July 2019
                Page count
                Figures: 3, Tables: 1, Pages: 10
                Funding
                COMPASS provided support in the form of salaries for author SP. The funder did not have any role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of the authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.
                Categories
                Research Article
                Science Policy
                Science Policy
                Science and Technology Workforce
                Careers in Research
                Scientists
                People and Places
                Population Groupings
                Professions
                Scientists
                Research and Analysis Methods
                Research Assessment
                Citation Analysis
                Research and Analysis Methods
                Scientific Publishing
                Social Sciences
                Political Science
                Public Policy
                Social Sciences
                Law and Legal Sciences
                Social Sciences
                Sociology
                Communications
                Mass Media
                Magazines
                Social Sciences
                Political Science
                Custom metadata
                All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.

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                Uncategorized

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