Implementación en el simulador de la nueva compuerta lógica XOR

Analysing the institutional environment in which scholars and researchers undertake their research is vital for a clear understanding of their research communication needs and priorities, as a precursor to ICT-mediated research communication. This study revealed many institutional problems and challenges affect the scholarly and research community, thereby, making it hard for them to produce and communicate research outputs. These included institutional mandates, philosophical orientations and policies; institutional leadership; institutional culture; funding and research resources and motivation.

5.2.3.1 Institutional mandates, philosophical orientations and policies

The study found institutional mandates, philosophical orientations and policies to be a major limitation to communication of research outputs. In the first place, researchers commented that the mandate of the research institutes did not require them to communicate research. Their role was to undertake research and leave the dissemination to the relevant government ministries as the following quotes show:

You see here we are governed by the law and the law says D is mandated to do research on matters related to health and whatever they discover has to be given to those who are mandated to facilitate the application of the findings… (RS2_D)

… We do not have the mandate to carry out extension services and we don’t have that capacity…I believe if we were to do it would bring a conflict of interest between us and the Fisheries department (GO3_F)

Thus, the policy mandate regarding research communication in Kenya is problematic, in that it leads to, what a senior research scientist called, “dichotomisation of roles [where] a researcher does research and an extension worker picks this up and relays it to a farmer” (RS4_E). Researchers felt this has led to difficulties in communicating research outputs.

Contrary to the policy mandate that regards involvement of researchers and scholars in dissemination of research outputs as a conflict of interest, researchers expressed the need for them to go beyond just documenting research to communicating research.

They felt this was necessary because communication is a two way process between researchers, as the designers of research and custodians of research outputs, and end-users. They felt the research design should have the end-users in mind, which calls for continuous communication between the two ends of the continuum. Consequently, they said, if research communication was to be effective and efficient, the designer, who in this case is the researcher or scholar, needed to be involved in dissemination.

Not only would this facilitate the designing of research that was tailored towards communication but also the translation of research outputs into outcomes and impacts:

I would like to say something about policies that these institutions work with. In order to communicate a message that message must have been there in the first place and must have been designed for the purpose of communication to whoever the target audience is. Now it so happens that policies and resources put forth are not primarily designed to develop such a message. You end up with institutions that are there, that are generating the message but the message is not tailored to be either transmitted [to]

or used [by] particular clients. So in that context, to give a line example, you end up with research results on the shelf. The reason being the researcher was never perhaps, in the terms of reference of his work, required to communicate [that] message, that result (RS1_G)

The policy mandates researchers to undertake research and leaves the dissemination for the extensionists. This is limiting because a researcher … should go beyond just doing the research. They should be able to communicate otherwise the outputs cannot be translated into outcomes and into impacts. So need to go beyond just documenting the results of research. We should be able to communicate these results and it should be a dual way. It therefore matters in the design of your research: did you have the end-users in mind? If you had, there should have been a communication right at the start, these people communicating their problems if you are researching on real

issues. These issues should come from the people and they should have been communicated to you and, at every stage, you should be able to communicate to them (RS4_E).

It is also important for researchers to be involved at the dissemination stage because a lot of tacit knowledge is embedded in data (Borgman, 2007), and may not be effectively passed on by extension workers who were not involved in the research process−conception, design, data gathering, analysis and synthesis. In addition, it was reported the extension workers in Kenya are not adequately facilitated to disseminate research as they lacked tools. Moreover, organising data for communication takes time and skill (Borgman, 2007); hence, there is need for institutions to have researchers on board right from the implementation stage.

In terms of institutional policy for the universities, research communication was reported to be less of a priority than teaching:

Research is not the core of the many of the teaching institutions here. In actual fact the core business is teaching (LR1_A)

The universities are generally mandated to do research, extension and communication of that research but teaching is the main part (RS1_G).

The mandates and philosophical orientations require universities to “do research that is efficiently academic in their considerations to meet certain academic standards”

(LR3_B) and does not necessarily have to answer to the needs of the citizen groups like farmers and policymakers. A renowned scholar explained this has led to an attitudinal problem where some, especially the old traditional scientists, see engaging in applied research as vocationalising and trivialising research and taking away their time that should be used in thinking and doing research, not implementing research findings:

I was otherwise recently exposed to a very interesting debate with one of the universities within East Africa where a biotechnology professor was openly saying we do not want to vocationalise education…He said you are making it like a very low level institute whose business is to solve problems. When shall we think and do science for the excellence of science? So there is a philosophical distinction here between the purpose as seen by the professor and the purpose as seen by the government for supporting that institution… (RS1_G).

Consequently, institutions end up with research results that are tailored to be publicised solely through academic channels, such as reputable high impact journals, conferences and any other recognised form of publishing. This view was expressed by

a whole range of participants including researchers, librarians and government officials:

We are not actually oriented towards that [communicating research]. And I believe it is everywhere … academics publish the papers; they file them… unless somebody, a donor probably go and actually get a flyer… (LR1_A)

… on the academic side of it I think the scientists are able to publish but … …they [researchers] really look around and be able to publish in these so called high impact journals and to have your work published or even to find the right place to publish, can take some time (L2_E)

The scholarly community in my experience has been conservative particularly in terms of what you might call the channels for sharing because of the orthodox university beliefs and practices “you publish or perish” where publishing was meant to be in a journal … if you are lucky what they called a peer-refereed journal in some international setting. The other one in the traditional university idea… is that you have learned conferences and workshops… (GO1_Ma).

Publishing is what researchers are mandated to do and so their philosophical inclinations emphasise “publish or perish,” rather than communicating. Consequently, some research products were not useful to the ordinary people and/or conclusive enough to be communicated:

I hate that motto [publish or perish] … They [scholars] are in panic… We like to encourage people to publish but not rubbish; and we like people to innovate but not for the sake of innovation but because they have found it profitable and useful for Kenyans to innovate. You see like I have been publishing for the last 35 years personally and apart from training one or two PhDs I don’t see what my research has done to the ordinary mwananchi [citizen] (GO2_Mb).

So you have material that is shoddy being communicated because of the pressure to communicate (laughs) or publish or perish. So that has been a big challenge and we have been trying to tell our researchers to take time, carry on with their research until when they get conclusive results that is when they will feel free to communicate the same (SE1_C).

Hence, research outputs do not reach the people they should impact on.

Thus, there seemed to be a conflict between government’s expectation that research informs developmental goals and research institutions’ mandates and philosophical orientations regarding scholarly research communication. Institutions and funding agencies pushed researchers to publish in high impact journals to be evaluated well.

This was said to affect dissemination of research outputs to targets like farmers and policymakers, in that researchers are too preoccupied with what/where to publish to have time to think about farmers and policymakers. Consequently, the few research outputs that did exist were in form of journal articles which ended up in international

journals where few, certainly not farmers or policymakers, could access them. These findings concur with Borgman’s (2007) observations that:

Policies and strategies to share research data have been promulgated for several decades, but the same issues persist. One explanation for this is the lack of enforcement of current policies. Publication requirements are enforced more stringently than are data-sharing requirements. Reviewers of subsequent grant proposals assess the published products of previous research, yet they rarely put much weight on whether data from prior grants were made available (p. 124).

Participants called for policy amendments to allow for more harmonious policy systems where research would be implemented by a team from both research institution and implementing ministry to ensure quality and hasten the process of implementing results:

… we should have either a team at the initial stage from us and the Fisheries department because there is that element of what [findings] you submit there in form of technical report by the time it is synthesised and passed on to the fishermen, it is already changed (GO3_F).

A scientist recommended institutional structures be put in place to help execute existing policies and also for flexibility to facilitate implementation of policies:

How do our communication systems, our agricultural policies relate to other related activities that we undertake or go through? … policies are just statements of intent. The actual differences come when the statements of intent are translating into realities, into action… What structures are in place or what changes are there in the structure to allow the realisation of the goals or objectives? ... Kenya is blessed that they have lots of policy issues and I think even right now the country is awash with policy changes; everywhere you go policy reviews and so on. But if the form is such that it is rigid it may not allow those changes to be realised or to realise their intended goal (RS4_E).

A lecturer suggested enforcement of performance-based management in research institutions, with promotion be based on products, not publications, would go a long way to reinforce communication of research outputs that can inform the policy and practice.

The influence of institutional mandates and policies on research communication calls for amendments of the same, if effective research communication, traditional or ICT-enabled, is ever going to thrive and ensure research information flows to those who need it.

5.2.3.2 Institutional leadership

As well as institutional policies and mandates, the findings established that institutional leadership was a key factor in the research communication process.

Participants pointed to the need for excellent and visionary institutional leadership in order for research to flourish. They felt research communication needed to be directed by a leader who could think strategically, especially when it came to soliciting for research funding. A renowned scientist commented that this visionary and strategic thinking seemed to be lacking in the majority of the leaders in most research institutions, not only in Kenya but Africa generally. He said many leaders would rather wait for donations, which are not sustainable, even when their institutions are endowed with resources:

I was giving a lecture at the University of Ibadan and I was sad because here you have a research institute which is saying that they don’t have any money to carry out research. They want to carry out research on forests… Just one hectare of the forest would produce the US$60,000 that the director of research is fighting to have from a donor... [However] there is no understanding and no vision to see that if you want the thousands of hectares of forest to be well looked after, cutting off one in order to service the others would be the most logical thing… They say no! No! Don’t touch it! Go to a donor and go on your knees and beg for US$ 60,000 to work out how you are going to look after these. …it shows that the vision is totally corrupted!

Confidence is not there. Thinking is gone! We are not thinking really. So that is it (RS1_G).

Research participants believed visionary leadership was hampered by the stiff bureaucracy, which greatly hindered research communication in public research institutions. They said it hampered free flow of information and communication, leading to unnecessary delays in matters that required urgent attention. They explained this was occasioned by the fact that those in leadership positions were administrators, or even scientists, who in most cases did not see the work of the scientist as a priority or did not understand why it needed to be urgent:

…there is a problem with how the scientific community relates with the administration because the administration guys are from different schools and they don’t see the things we think are important as important or the things that we give priority to are not priority issues for them. There lies the conflict, e.g. the administration may be slow in arranging your travelling to collect data even if you inform them of your plans in good time. This is because they don’t see the importance of such a research… They even forget that they are here because of the scientists. They pretend as if the institute is an institute of administration, not a medical one (RS7_D).

Moreover, the power distance between the leadership and the researchers put so big a rift between the two groups that they failed to see their roles as complementary. Lack of cordial relationships was reported between the senior and junior researchers where the senior researchers in management positions at times did not pass important

research information to the juniors. The resulting hierarchical structures caused stiff relationships, making communication between the leadership and researchers difficult:

I tell you, it [communication] is hard [with a lot of emphasis]. We have the hierarchical structures that they inherited from their colonial masters. It will be very hard for the current director to relate with junior people of even their assistant directors… Like if the [institute] director would like to talk to [me], he … has to go through my boss or he will give the responsibility to my boss and my boss in turn will relate to me… It is not possible for me to go to that office and say whatever I want to say…. if those people above you are given information they won’t pass it … It will never reach the people who are managing the activities. I go there [to the field] and

… I am told “Oh! We are not aware of this!” Or information might have been sent through an email to a centre director−their computers are connected with few megabites through the only telephone line − it will never reach the scientists. … (RS6_C).

Thus, there was conflict in terms of the focus and interests of the scientists and the leadership resulting in power distance. This barrier to research communication needed to be addressed if research communication was going to be reinforced.

The public research institutions whose research programmes seemed to be doing well are those where leadership cooperated and collaborated with members of staff to give direction in implementation of research programmes. This ensured there were clear mechanisms of communicating so that researchers were kept abreast with what was happening in their field and also had fora where they could share their research outputs, as a scientist explained:

… [our director] is extraordinary. I admire that man. You see he has excellent leadership qualities. He is a very good listener. If you have to be in leadership you must be willing to listen and that is the hallmark of [our director]. And then he has this foresight. That is why we have the African Forum, the journal, the electronic infrastructure which he is building. It is a whole strategy (RS5_D).

Such participants described their institutions as having focused and assertive leadership that allowed an environment that was conducive to both the research community and the funding agencies. The leadership was said to be vigilant and diplomatic enough to ensure donors’ assistance was on the institution’s terms, in line with their strategic goals:

You see what that man did [the Centre Director in one of the institutes]… he has got all of them [the donors] under control and they have put up a facility for him and are pouring in money... Use your diplomacy and agree with them but let them do it at your terms (RS5_D).

Other participants reported their CEOs had an open door policy where researchers were free to communicate and be active in research:

… our current CEO has an open policy- anybody, any researcher can make a comment, hold a press media briefing without a recourse for his authority…we have found that this kind of approach is working and our officers are responsive and we have not had an incidence which has got a negative implication either to the institution or the quality and the facts of the information so released (GO3_F).

Overall, the researchers in the international research institutions reported their relationships with leadership were horizontal with a very thin bureaucracy. The scientists in these institutions said they were facilitated, enjoyed doing research, and communication among themselves and with the leadership were efficient and easy.

They explained theirs was a multicultural environment with the majority of those in leadership coming from the developed Western societies. So, the culture in these international institutions was Western with very small power distance, as one of the research scientists, who previously had worked in the public institutions, commented:

At E we maintain a very thin bureaucratic process and we are quite porous. For example, if I feel that I need to communicate some information to the top, say the Director-General of the institute, I can inform him the same time I am informing my boss and it will not be taken in bad taste (RS4_E).

At E we maintain a very thin bureaucratic process and we are quite porous. For example, if I feel that I need to communicate some information to the top, say the Director-General of the institute, I can inform him the same time I am informing my boss and it will not be taken in bad taste (RS4_E).