From Mission Statements to Mailing Lists
Ten Ways Research Institutions and Learned Societies Can Support Policy Engagement
Key features in a nutshell
- Research institutions and learned societies can actively shape academic policy engagement rather than leaving it to individual researchers’ initiative — through organisational and financial support, training programmes, internal recognition structures
- Institutions and learned societies don’t need large budgets to get started: while employing a knowledge mobiliser or brokerage team can be incredibly beneficial, many effective initiatives, such as curating policymaker mailing lists, offering funding-application advice, or hosting lunch talks, require limited resources and can be embedded into existing structures.
By recognising policy engagement in career progression, funding decisions, and institutional strategy, research institutions and learned societies can move it from a marginal activity to a core part of their institutional mission, alongside research and teaching.
How can research institutions and learned societies promote academic policy engagement?
- Provide researchers with policy insights: Researchers generally do not have the time to understand policymaking processes, policy priorities, windows of opportunity, and knowledge exchange formats. Knowledge mobilisers at research institutions and learned societies — such as policy engagement officers, communication staff, or outreach managers — can support researchers in this regard. By sharing policy developments, key priorities, and calls for evidence, these knowledge mobilisers and research institutions more broadly can help their communities understand where and when more scientific evidence is needed by policymakers. This information can be shared through webinars, newsletters, and information hubs.
- Support knowledge synthesis, translation, and exchange: In addition to sharing relevant policy developments, knowledge mobilisers can help researchers translate academic expertise into policy formats like policy briefs, policy reports, or presentations. They can help researchers identify relevant policymakers in parliaments, ministries, EU institutions, or international organisations and facilitate their initial interactions. They can also provide hands-on support, such as organising policy events, curating mailing lists, or editing policy publications.
Beyond supporting individual researchers, research institutions and learned societies can create and facilitate groups of researchers to provide scientific evidence. These groups or task forces are often created to provide evidence on a specific policy area and ideally include researchers from a range of different, relevant scientific disciplines. Administrative support from institutional knowledge mobilisers helps these groups by coordinating meetings, strategically steering the direction of group activities and tasks, and disseminating the scientific evidence to the intended policy audience.
- Provide financial support: Research institutions and learned societies can establish internal funds for researchers to engage in policy activities, such as organising policy events or travelling to capitals to engage with policymakers. Goethe University Frankfurt, for instance, provides funds specifically for events in Brussels. Policy engagement can also be built into performance agreements between university leadership and academic units or considered as a criterion for performance-related pay — mechanisms that exist, in various forms, across many European higher education systems (e.g., the Rewards and Recognition programme in the Netherlands).
- Facilitate opportunities for two–way dialogues: In addition to providing financial support for policy activities, research institutions and learned societies can also facilitate these initiatives and create spaces for individual researchers to engage with policymakers. For example, the European Geoscience Union (EGU) coordinates the EGU Science-Policy Pairing Scheme that provides researchers with the opportunity to work alongside a Member of the European Parliament for one week.
- Inform grant applicants about policy engagement during the funding application process: Not every research topic lends itself to this, but researchers who consider policy engagement early on can meaningfully build it into applications and, later, into the funded project itself. Indeed, many funding bodies now require research projects to demonstrate societal impact witpolicy engagement constituting one potential impact dimension. Some research institutes and learned societies, especially those with Research Funding Officers, may be able to provide advice to researchers on available funding and how to integrate policy engagement into research projects and grant applications.
- Cultivate internal recognition: Although providing science advice and integrating research into policy requires expertise, skills, and time, it often isn’t recognised or rewarded by research institutions. Research institutions and learned societies can internally communicate the importance of academic policy engagement via mission statements and institutional strategies. They can track policy engagement activities and provide recognition for achievements or awards in policy engagement, similar to achievements in research, teaching, or academic service. Research institutions can also host low-cost, virtual or in-person formats, such as lunch talks, where researchers share insights from their engagement in advisory bodies, policy events, or commissioned research.
- Teaching load reductions: Reducing teaching obligations can give researchers limited additional time for policy engagement. Goethe University Frankfurt, for example, allows researchers serving on national or international policy advisory bodies a reduction of up to two teaching hours per week.
- Include relevant training in professional development programmes: Navigating the science-policy interface requires distinct skills that researchers rarely acquire during their PhDs. Researchers often learn the skills required for engaging with policymakers on their own, and building this understanding can be time-consuming. By providing structured training and coaching, research institutions and learned societies can not only speed up the learning process, but also ensure best practice guidelines are taught. Alternatively, Institutions can integrate policy engagement modules directly into graduate academies or human resources development programmes.
- Advocating for funding: While national governments and the EU stress the importance of science for policy, securing long-term funding for policy engagement continues to be a challenge. Research institutions and learned societies can advocate for their communities by outlining the importance of long-term funding for policy engagement togovernments, the EU, and funding organisations. Encouraging examples exist in Europe. For example, the Universities Policy Engagement Network in the UK has been awarded a grant of about £5.9 million by Research England, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and UK Research and Innovation, to improve UK universities’ policy engagement abilities.
- Advocating for the reform of research assessment: Supporting research assessment reform is another way in which research institutions and learned socieites can advocate for their communities. A true systemic shift requires rewriting the rules of academic career progression, which have historically been dominated strictly by publication volume and grant acquisition. Through global coalitions like CoARA (Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment), research institutions are actively working to broaden evaluation metrics. While research institutions and learned societies can engage in both science advice and advocacy, both activities should be distinct and separate from one another to ensure that any scientific evidence provided is seen as independent and unbiased.
Sources and further reading
Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) (2022), The Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment, accessed on 13 August 2026.
European Geosciences Union (EGU) (2026), Policy Overview, accessed on 13 August 2026.
European Geosciences Union (EGU) (2026), Geo Policy, accessed on 13 August 2026.
Lambertucci, S. A., et al. (2025), Supporting Researchers’ Engagement in International Science–Policy Bodies. Nature Sustainability, 8, 1–3.
Recognition and Rewards Programme (2023), Room for everyone’s talent in practice. Road map. How we are shaping a new system of recognition and rewards, accessed on 13 August 2026.
von Schneidemesser, E., et al. (2020), Prepare Scientists to Engage in Science-Policy. Environmental Science & Technology, 54(23), 14787–14789.
Do you want to know more about the policy engagement toolkit?
Do you want to share your experience in policy engagement? Do you think about contributing to the policy engagement toolkit? Feel free to contact Tome Sandevski via science-policy@pvw.uni-frankfurt.de
