A method to disseminate and communicate IS research outputs beyond academia

Abstract

Academic researchers in many disciplines are facing difficulties in disseminating their research outputs beyond the academic community. Particularly, Information Systems (IS) academic researchers have been struggling to make their research more relevant to practice. The diversity of IS research means that should be a wide audience within and beyond academia who could benefit from IS research outputs. This audience includes educators, practitioners, patients, etc. How IS relevant to practice is a central dilemma of IS research. Research relevance is classified according to dimensions such as interesting, implementable, current, accessible “Article style” by many IS scholars. These dimensions are important to be investigated as some academic papers are yet to be beneficial to an audience beyond academia. The Accessible dimension is the focus of this study where accessible means the academic papers should be readable and understood in terms of tone, style, structure, and semantics by the potential audience beyond the academic community. This study investigates the barriers that limit academic researchers in disseminating and communicating their research outputs beyond academia. This study aims to design a communication method to assist academic researchers in disseminating and communicating their research outputs beyond academia. This study consists of three phases, in the first phase a qualitative method is applied by interviewing academics in the Information System and Computing Department at Brunel University to gain a better understanding of how and why academics disseminate beyond academia. Based on communication theories a research framework is adapted to analyse and explain the interview data. In the second phase, short videos are recorded of 10 academics where each explains one of their papers. In the third phase, two different groups are interviewed to evaluate the 10 short videos in regards the Information Quality (IQ) dimensions (i.e. appropriate amount of information, format, and timeliness). By using the thematic analysis technique the academics highlighted three barriers that limit them to disseminate and communicate their research outputs beyond academia. The three barriers are the message (i.e. academic structure and language of research papers), channel (i.e. academic journal and conferences), and social system (i.e. lack of Incentives, lack of time, and lack of support). Moreover, academics emphasised the vital role of feedback loop in their communication with target audience beyond academia. The 10 short videos are designed to overcome two of these barriers (i.e. message and channels). Each short video is evaluated by its academic author on one hand and the potential audience/stakeholders of the short video from the other hand (e.g. practitioners). Thus, the academic authors of the video suggest some changes by adjusting the video structure and adding some examples for more explanations of their research papers. Also, authors concerned about format particularly the visual elements of the video which have to be completely matched with the title of the video. However, the opinions of potential audiences vary based on their information need. For example, some practitioners are concerned with the practical information, in other words, practitioners seek the applicable part of the information provided in the short video (i.e. how to apply something); and others watch the short video to increase their awareness of a particular topic. This study will assist academic researchers to focus on how to disseminate their research outputs to audience/stakeholders beyond academia using media tools (i.e. video). Also, it provides a novel method of disseminating and communicating their research outputs beyond the academic community. Moreover, this study helps to create an interaction platform that enables academic researchers to build a collaborative framework and a mutual understanding with the audience beyond academia.