“It’s Not Rocket Science”: Establishing a German Community of Practice on Policy Engagement

Key features in a nutshell

Getting a Community of Practice off the ground is not a complex undertaking – yet it requires some first steps and regular commitment by everyone involved. In the case of our Community in the area of Policy Engagement, it proved especially productive to focus on practical knowledge and working level interactions as well as achievable goals.

• Overall, Communities of Practice can be an essential part of enabling a dynamic, innovative, resilient, and agile network on a national level (and beyond).
• Our Community of Practice focuses on practical testing, implementation, and further development of formats, methods, and structures in the field of science-policy engagement in Germany. Our goal is to integrate scientific insights into political processes in a way that ensures their practical relevance, thereby contributing to evidence-informed decision making.
• Our Community of Practice integrates a wide array of practitioners from different institutions within the German science system and related areas, reflecting an interdisciplinary diversity of practices. This allows us to promote the importance of science-policy interactions and evidence-informed advice in various institutional and political settings.
• Focus on doable activities such as regular meetings, webinars, participation in conferences as well as exchanges regarding formats, methods, as well as addressing stakeholders or funding possibilities.

How does the format or structure work? / What is the crosscutting issue?

The German Community of Practice on Policy Engagement works as a loose but active network of individuals all coming from the science-policy interface. It started as an initiative of the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space with some funding for in person meetings and events and quickly developed a life of its own with very engaged and active members of the group taking up activities.

It follows a quite open structure: we have a ‘letter of commitment’ which outlines the basic understanding of policy engagement, the motivation to be part of the Community as well as an obligation that all outputs and results of the group are handled collaboratively. The Community also has an active coordinator who sets up monthly online meetings with specific agenda points and time frames, recruits and manages (new) members, sets up an infrastructure (e.g., shared working documents) and deals with internal and external communication. Smaller working groups within the Community take on concrete activities such as webinars, conference submissions, as well as sessions or forums and stakeholder meetings.

We have an active LinkedIn group with over 430 members to reach a wider audience beyond the core Community. Additionally, the core group aims to meet in person annually.

Since our Community of Practice has started working, the following concrete activities have been initiated:

(1) Regular webinars on topics such as impact, altmetrics, science-policy toolkits, communication methods (2) Organisation of an interagency forum with 28 policymakers from 20 federal ministries and institutions (3) Planning of workshops during various conferences (e.g., 2026 Conference of the Research Institute Social Cohesion in Frankfurt or the 2026 Forum Wissenschaftkommunikation in Leipzig)

Possible Challenges and How to Address Them

A main challenge is time commitment since the group is not an institutionalised one with designated staff or working hours. Therefore, activities should be aimed to fit ones already being done within projects or other institutional activities as well as (research) interests. Also, providing clear benefits such as knowledge exchange, practical insights, and ‘tips and tricks’ can help support the continuous participation of Community members. A further challenge is to find a dedicated coordinator who has the capacity to manage the Community over a certain amount of time.

Tasks and Resources

For knowledge exchange officers / research managers:

• Members of the Community: individuals working in the area of knowledge exchange who are part of the Community of Practice should regularly take part in the online meetings as well as the webinars; ideally, they should also be active regarding specific topics and in smaller working groups that develop and execute certain activities; the time invested for this is about one or one and a half days a month
• Coordinator: the person managing the Community should be ready and able to invest more time and effort; the coordination as well as communication of the Community is a key task for ensuring that activities can take place and that there is follow-up; also, the coordinator should be willing to interact and cooperate with people

References

Bundesministerium für Forschung, Technologie und Raumfahrt (2025), #Factory WissKomm Edition 2 Umsetzung, Ergebnisse und Neue Perspektiven. Policy Engagement. pp. 51-58.

Linkedin group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13163380/ (Mainly in German)

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