Bridging the gap: Real-world impact and the potential of public scholarship in STEM with The Conversation Africa

What the event covered

Increasingly researchers in STEM are asked to show the impact of their publications in highly ranked journals.

This session explores the real-life impact of open access and making research accessible to professionals, non-specialist, and general public.

We focused on strategies for reaching different audiences, and techniques for communicating research so that the public understands the meaning, importance, and applicability of your research. We will share best practice advice on the use of Plain Language Summaries (PLS), and how PLS allows you to put important research into the hands of those who need it the most. 

Play the recording to explore as we engage in a scholarly exploration of the significance of research impact, unveiling a spectrum of strategic approaches for engaging diverse audiences.

This session was held in collaboration with The Conversation Africa, and is primarily aimed at researchers from that region, though all are welcome to watch.

About the speakers

Victoria Babbit is the Director of Researcher Development & Outreach at Taylor & Francis. Victoria joined Taylor & Francis in 2008 and throughout the past decade has supported researchers as they navigate the rapidly changing publishing landscape.

Her work involves engaging with global research communities to build knowledge and capacity related to publishing and editorial activities. Prior to joining Taylor & Francis, Victoria conducted post graduate research in Geography at The University of Washington.

Richard Delahunty started his academic publishing career at Cambridge University Press, trained as a journalist, and later moved into academic publishing, to an Editorial Assistant post at Manchester University Press. Promoted to Assistant Editor, I moved to Pearson to commission and develop study guides, then to Routledge as journal Managing Editor, promoted to Publisher then Associate Editorial Director in Politics, International Relations and Strategic Studies.

He has been Global Portfolio Director, first for Engineering and Computer Science Journals, then Physical Sciences, Engineering and Computer Science Journals, since 2014. His role is to oversee the entire journal portfolio in those subject areas, and to ensure effective publishing strategies are communicated to our most important partners in the smoothest and most effective way. He has a keen interest in disruptive innovation, scholarly research workflows, knowledge transfer and learned society publishing. He is currently researching how authors choose where to publish in the scholarly communications landscape, where rapid transformation in business model and an abundance of venue choice is driving a change in what influences venue choice across all subject fields.

Pfungwa Nyamukachi heads up university partnerships and stakeholder relations for The Conversation Africa. She has 20 years experience in marketing and 12 of those have been spent serving the university sector across Africa. Pfungwa holds two Masters degrees, one in Administration from the University of Pretoria and her latest one is a Masters in Science and technology studies from Stellenbosch University, in 2018 where she majored in innovation systems, bibliometrics, research evaluation and science communication.

She is currently a PHD candidate at the University of Pretoria with the Graduate School of Technology and Innovation Management and her focus is on the higher education sector focusing on research evaluation and research impact

Play the recording