Deep matters: making research in the deep ocean valuable 

• In Event: Relations and Troubles of Tools of Valuation – I

Abstract

Ocean science is called upon to aid in solving grand societal challenges, like the declining health of the ocean and climate change. This call is reflective of larger shifts in evaluation systems and practices towards valuing impactful, interdisciplinary, solution-oriented research, with policy makers increasingly embracing the idea that directed science policy can help tackle ‘grand challenges’ facing society. These steering efforts may relate to or create tensions with other benchmarks for scientific quality, e.g. excellence or global competitiveness. For example, Horizon Europe’s mission-oriented framework aims to be widely relevant to society; to be targeted, measurable, and time-bound; and to establish impact-driven goals, while simultaneously being based upon a market-shaping framework that steers research along economic principles.

Choices in structuring research priorities may affect research fields differently: formalizing the inclusion of social impact into research evaluations may produce different orders of worth, wherein ocean research fields fare differently based upon their ability to construct societal relevance. This shift could potentially create tensions for ocean science fields that seem to have an epistemic focus which is distant from societal concerns. Through interviews, this paper will examine how researchers in two such deep ocean fields—paleoceanography and deep sea geomicrobiology—navigate multiple, potentially incongruous orders of worth. For example, when applying for funding how do researchers navigate simultaneous demands for their research to be relevant both to society and challenges it faces as well as to their scientific communities?

Authors

• Sarah Rose Bieszczad, Centre for Science & Technology Studies (CWTS), Leiden University

• Maximilian Fochler, University Of Vienna

• Sarah de Rijcke, Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS)