This master thesis examines what Sweden’s third largest municipality Malmö want to achieve with the research policy they conduct and how the execution of the policy is organised. The intention is also to explain which factors that limits the city’s organization of the policy. The thesis is based around a case study design and the methodology used to collect the empirical evidence is both a qualitative document study and an interview study. The thesis concludes that the aim of the research policy is to help the cities administrations to use evidence based methods, help the city to achieve a sustainable development, test new social inventions and make the city an attractive employer. The research policy also has a cognitive aim, namely to in cooperation with other societal actors produce knowledge that could solve complex societal problems. Malmö city is internally organising the research policy in a pluralistic fashion which entails that the policy is enacted decentralised in the various administrations. The externally organisation of the research policy is directed towards the Swedish stat and different universities. The third and last conclusions of this thesis is that Malmö city must consider both legal in the form of the Public Procurement Act. The city also must consider economic limitations both in form of project costs but also since the cities research policies are dependent on external financing. The current political and economic institutions also limit the design and execution of the research policy.

No description available.

L'objectif de cette thèse est d'analyser la fabrique des politiques scientifiques en Suisse. Dans ce but, un accent particulier a été mis sur la politique du Fonds national suisse de la recherche scientifique (FNS) qui représente l'une des plus importantes sources de financement publique de recherche en Suisse. La thèse est divisée en deux parties.La première explique la manière dont différents acteurs participent à l'élaboration et à la légitimation de nouveaux instruments d'action publique dans le domaine de la recherche. Ces instruments visent non seulement à modifier l'organisation institutionnelle et la finalité de la recherche mais également à transformer les représentations des chercheurs. Ainsi, dans l'étude des « Pôles de recherche nationaux » (PRN), mis en place par le Fonds national (FNS) à la fin des années 1990, nous avons considéré cet instrument en tant que porteur d'un discours normatif qui propose de nouveaux critères d'évaluation de l'excellence scientifique. En effet, ces nouveaux critères ne reposent plus seulement sur la qualité scientifique de la recherche, mais également sur la qualité managériale de son organisation. Un tel modèle normatif articule logique de la découverte et de l'expérimentation, d'une part, et logique de l'efficience et de la productivité, de l'autre.La seconde partie analyse la manière dont les chercheurs, financés par ce programme de recherche, interprètent, négocient et traduisent ce nouveau cadre d'interprétation dans le contexte de leurs pratiques. Une approche en terme de « catégorisation identitaire » a permis d'analyser les « médiations » entre la politique du Fonds national, via son programme « Pôles de recherche nationaux », et les pratiques de recherche des membres d'un laboratoire. Nous montrons ainsi que les catégories identitaires ont notamment été mobilisées pour la constitution, le contrôle et la promotion de collectifs.Cette double perspective analytique permet, selon nous, de rendre compte de l'efficacité d'instruments d'action publique tels que les « Pôles de recherche nationaux » en les comprenant à la fois comme des discours et des technique de pouvoir, à savoir des technologies de gouvernement. / This dissertation analyzes the making of science policies in Switzerland, with a special emphasis on the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) policy, which represents Switzerland's most important public funding agency. The dissertation is organised in two parts.The first one describes how different actors are involved in the development and legitimization of new policy tools. These instruments are designed not only to change the institutional organization of research and its purpose, but also to transform the representations of researchers. Thus, in the study of "National Centre of Competences in Research" (NCCR), established by the National Fund (SNF) in the late 1990s, we have considered this instrument as the embodiment of a normative discourse that proposes new evaluation criteria of scientific excellence. Those new criteria are not only based on the scientific quality of research activities, but also on the quality of its managerial organization. This model articulates normative logic of discovery and experimentation, on the one hand, and the logic of efficiency and productivity, on the other.A second part examines how researchers funded by this research program interpret, negotiate and translate this new interpretive framework in the context of their practices. An approach in terms of "membership categorization" is used to analyze the "mediations" between the policy of the SNF, through its "National Centre of Competences in Research" (NCCR), and the research practices of members of a laboratory funded by this program. This allows us to show that membership categories have been mobilized for the establishment, control and promotion of collectives.In our opinion, this double analytical perspective allows to account for the effectiveness of public policy instruments like the NCCR, understanding those instruments as discourse and power techniques, that is technologies of government.

本研究旨於探討政策研究社群(STI policy research communities)在政策實務中所扮演的角色、與政策實務間的關係及互動，以及該社群隨著不同政策情境其所累積的知識結構。本文以英國科技政策研究社群SPRU及MIoIR為例，首先以Top-down的方式從整體制度及機構面進行探討，第二部份則進一步描述及探討SPRU及MIoIR這兩個研究社群在英國政策實務中所扮演的角色及定位。第三部份旨於探討在英國的政策研究及決策支援制度情境下，政策研究社群與政策實務間的互動關係，以及影響兩者關係的關鍵因素。第四部份則進一步探討如何橋接政策與研究之間的缺口，以及研究社群如何透過不同的研究成果擴散模式，進而政策產生影響與效益。第五部份，本文綜合英國科技政策社群所處之制度及機構情境、政策研究社群之知識產出、政策與研究之間的缺口、以及兩者間的互動關係，從Bottom-Up的角度提出一全面性的理論架構，填補過去文獻在探討政策與研究兩者間關係時，僅探討部份、或分析特定議題之理論缺口。 / The importance of scientific research which positively motivates economic growth has been widely recognised by governments of most countries in the world. A government needs to formulate policies for sustaining national developments, but a sound policy usually has to be evident by academic findings provided by academic researcher. On the opposite, an academic researcher can conduct research needed by the government only if they can be funded by the government. The mutual reliance on each other for academic researchers and the government as well as the relationship between them have been investigated previously in literature. The complex relationship between the government and researcher is modelled as “principal-agent relationship” (Pratt & Zeckhauser, 1985). The interdisciplinary STI (Science, Technology and Innovation) policy research, which seeks to solve socioeconomic problem at national level, creates knowledge much closer to what the government needs and can be used directly to inform policy formulation. The relationship between the government and STI policy research community is therefore much stronger and more sensitive than that between the government and other research communities. In the process of delivering research to policymakers, the agenda and concern underlying different interacting scenarios between actors are varied from academia, funding agency, governmental organisation and policy makers. Therefore, changing the way of communication is becoming important for academic researchers to make the whole process more smoothly or effectively. However, in this interacting process research actors not only need to turn around the language, but also change the perspective they view from different scenarios especially when there is conflicting interest or view exited between academia and politics. The purpose of this study aims to investigate in what way can STI policy research community influence policy as well as interaction between STI policy research community and the government by bottom-up approach, i.e. from STI policy researcher to the government and three different perspectives proposed by Allison (1971), i.e. 1) Bounded Rational Perspective, 2) Organisational Behaviour Perspective, and 3) Governmental Politics Perspective. This study selects the two prestigious research organisations in the UK- SPRU and MIoIR (formerly PREST) as the case study and a total of sixteen renown interviewees are interviewed, since the UK is the leading country in STI policy research and the most outstanding research organisations in the UK STI policy research community are SPRU and MIoIR which have contributed to STI policymaking since 1970s, interaction between the UK government and this research community are analysed. Further, the UK Technology Foresight programme undertaken jointly by SPRU and MIoIR is used as a representative event to demonstrate the responding strategy of STI policy research community to the UK government. It is found in this study that a successful contribution from STI policy research community to the government critically relies on appropriate responding strategies which are dependent on whom (on the government side) exactly the researcher is interacting with. A successfully interaction between researcher and the government takes a sound strategy which eventually lead to contribution of research to policy practice. Finally, this study develops several propositions for suggesting how to sustain effective policy contribution from STI policy researcher and sound interaction between STI policy research community and the government.

During the 1990's an increased debate concerning a new way of funding, organising and doing research is discernible. Characteristic elements in this are: collaboration between university and industry, context of application, user orientation and interdisciplinarity. A parallel development related to the environmental issues can also be distinguished, where the discourse of sustainable development has become the dominating political vision. How these changing contexts affect and influence a funding agency is analysed in this thesis. The source for the analysis is the Foundation of strategic environmental research, Mistra. Mistra was established in 1994 aiming at a renewal of Swedish environmental research, in which contributing to the vision of sustainable development is a central goal. Other characteristic objectives in Mistra are: solution orientation, user involvement, interdisciplinarity, and contributing to the competitiveness of Sweden. The main purpose of the thesis is to analyse ideas and notions about science and knowledge concerning the environmental problematic as viewed in Mistra. A specific interest is also directed to views and notions of the role of science in contemporary society. The main conclusion concerns awareness of epistemological issues in Mistra regarding different forms of knowledge and ways of doing research. This is especially apparent in the discussion related to evaluation of research, interdisciplinary, social sciences and user involvement. Moreover, I stress that this tendency also could be recognized in theories of knowledge production. Understanding Mistra as an example of contemporary knowledge production the post-positivist notions of knowledge, which is particularly argued for in theory of Mode 2, is therefore questioned. Consequently, issues of prerequisites and conditions of the occurrence of reflexivity and post-positivist epistemological thoughts are stressed and epistemological notions mirrored in contemporary knowledge production are discussed using the two concepts of unreflected ambivalence.

abstract: Investments in climate science come with an expectation of social benefit. Science policy--decision processes through which individuals and organizations support, manage, and evaluate research--plays an important role in determining those outcomes. Yet the details of how climate science policy actually works have received very little attention amid academic and policy-focused discussions of climate science. This dissertation examines climate science policy with particular attention to how it supports "public values" that justify research investments. It is widely recognized funding for climate science in the US has advanced knowledge considerably in recent decades but failed to produce useful information for decision makers. In Chapter 2, I use a methodological approach known as Public Value Mapping (PVM) to investigate this failure of the science policy system. My results show that science funding institutions have been ineffective at guiding climate science toward desired outcomes because of problematic, but common assumptions about the links between science and societal benefit. The remaining chapters look more closely at the implications of these tacit assumptions, which are held by individuals, and embedded in the organizations that implement climate science policy. Chapter 3 examines the notion that prediction is essential to climate science. Wide acceptance of the "prediction imperative" limits the scope of climate science policy. Chapter 4 examines the interplay of values and assumptions in two recently established organizations in Australia, each supporting research on climate change adaptation. In Chapter 5 I document a widespread assumption in the climate science literature that agreement among multiple models should bolster confidence in their results. This can only be correct if the models are independent of one another. Climate scientists have not demonstrated this to be true, nor have they offered a plausible framework for doing so. This dissertation adds an important dimension to our understanding of how climate science knowledge is produced, while offering constructive and practical recommendations to science policy decision makers working in government programs that fund climate science. Insight from these chapters suggests that an explicit and reflexive focus on values in science policy can be helpful to organizations pursuing science policy innovation. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Science and Technology Policy 2010

Ce travail de recherche interroge l'articulation de la politique scientifique à la pratique concrète et quotidienne des chercheurs académiques. Depuis les années 1980, on assiste à une remise en cause du modèle " traditionnel " d'organisation de la recherche, qui tend à être remplacé par un nouveau, dont les deux principales caractéristiques sont 1) le passage d'un financement récurrent à un financement majoritairement sur projets ; 2) l'affichage, au niveau de la politique scientifique, de l'interdisciplinarité comme un moyen de favoriser l'innovation. Dans ce mouvement global, les " nanos ", porteuses de promesses en termes de développement économique et de création d'emplois, apparaissent comme un levier pour rapprocher la recherche des enjeux économiques et industriels. C'est la raison pour laquelle nous appréhendons les " nanos " dans leur dimension de vecteur d'une recomposition de l'organisation de la recherche par la sphère politique. Ce mouvement est contesté par les chercheurs. Aussi, nous étudions, d'un côté, les transformations au niveau des exigences de la politique scientifique, et, d'un autre côté, les façons dont les chercheurs s'approprient, ou contournent, ces évolutions. Notre travail de terrain se focalise sur le niveau local et la constitution de l'Institut des technologies avancées en sciences du vivant (Itav), pensé comme un lieu devant favoriser l'innovation et le développement technologique, par le biais des nanobiotechnologies en particulier. Dans une perspective habermassienne visant à alimenter la question théorique des rapports entre système et monde vécu (Habermas, 1987), nous mettons au jour, à travers notre analyse, les motifs et les formes de la résistance des chercheurs aux injonctions politiques orientées vers des enjeux économiques. Cette résistance repose en partie sur des enjeux stratégiques, de carrière notamment. Mais elle est également fondée, en partie, sur un accord normatif autour de valeurs et de normes qui contribuent à la reproduction de la sphère de la recherche en tant que sphère d'activité autonome. / This research work scrutinizes the impact of science policy, both on practices for researchers and on the reorganization of academic research. There has been an evolution of the "traditional" model of research organization doubly characterized by: (1) the shift from a recurrent funding to project financing; (2) the promotion of interdisciplinary as a mean to foster innovation. As part of this movement, the field of "nanos", promoted as a growing area for economic and social issues (particularly in the area of health), is substantial. Thus, nanotechnologies are regarded as a lever to speed up and systematize this process. This work aims to evaluate the relevance of this hypothesis. In practice, does the field of "nanos" represent a vector of research renovation and reorganization ? I show that researchers question research policies that political authorities and economic leaders impose. On one hand, I study the characteristics of science policy in the field of "nano" and, on the other hand, the ways in which researchers implement these policies, sometimes significantly changing guidelines provided upstream. I focus my fieldwork on the constitution of the Advanced Technology Institute in Life Sciences (ITAV). It was conceived as a place to promote innovation and technology transfer, notably through the development of nanobiotechnology research. From a Habermasian perspective, I try to supply the theoretical issue about the relationship between the "System" and "Lifeworld" (Habermas, 1987). Thus, I uncover the patterns and forms of resistance from researchers to research policies injunctions whose economic target is questioned. The resistance from researchers is doubly founded : firstly, it is based on strategic considerations, in particular career choices; secondly, it is related to the adherence to values and norms which go beyond economic and political issues.

Cette thèse s’intéresse à la construction de carrières des chercheurs et universitaires effectuant de la recherche dans un « petit » pays, le Niger. Cette étude cherche en particulier à comprendre les principaux déterminants des choix de carrières et les moyens mobilisés pour réaliser leurs études et poursuive leur activité de recherche. Cette recherche est fondée sur une enquête qualitative réalisée au Niger au sein de trois institutions où se déroulent des activités de recherche : l’Université Abdou Moumouni de Niamey (UAM), l’Institut National de Recherche Agronomique du Niger (INRAN) et le Laboratoire d’Etudes et de Recherche sur les Dynamiques Sociales et le Développement Local (LASDEL). Au moyen d’entretiens semi-directifs et de récits de vie auprès de plus de 15% des chercheurs et universitaires nigériens, cette étude met en relief leurs trajectoires, leur leurs expériences, leurs points de vue sur leur profession.Les principaux résultats de cette recherche montrent que l’Etat nigérien, à travers sa politique de programmation menée jusque dans les années quatre-vingt avait promu la formation d’une grande quantité de jeunes ver l’enseignement supérieur. Ces personnes ont poursuivi le travail de recherche qu’ils avaient, à quelques exceptions près, réalisé lors de leurs études à l’étranger. Ainsi, alors que l’Etat s’intéressait avant tout à former des enseignants pour l’Université en les envoyant se former à l’étranger, en finançant leurs bourses et choisissant l’institution dans laquelle ils devraient exercer leur métier à leur retour, la recherche prenait racine au sein de l’Université. Après la crise de la dette et des programmes d’ajustement structurel, l’Etat a du abandonner cette forme de soutien dirigée avant tout à renforcer le personnel employé dans les administrations publiques, les écoles et l’université. La bourse ne devient plus synonyme d’emploi et moins encore d’orientation vers l’enseignement supérieur ou la recherche.Pourtant la situation dramatique de l’université changera de manière importante. C’est à cet instant aussi que, grâce à la lutte syndicale menée par les universitaires, l’Etat nigérien porte de nos jours un grand intérêt à la recherche et se concentre l’UAM qui bénéficie désormais de financements nationaux de recherche. Même si ces derniers ne sont pour l’instant pas suffisants, ils permettent de créer de véritables projets de recherche. La thèse examine les conditions de ce changement.Il découle aussi de cette étude que recherche se développe, en dépit des difficultés auxquelles est confrontée, et manifestement augmente si on en juge par les publications en croissance. / This thesis is investigating the construction of scientific careers of researchers and academics in Niger, a « small » scientific country. We try to understand the main determinants of career choices et means used to do their studies and continue in performing research. Our investigation is based on qualitative field work done in Niger in three institutions : Université Abdou Moumouni de Niamey (UAM), Institut National de Recherche Agronomique du Niger (INRAN) and the Laboratoire d’Etudes et de Recherche sur les Dynamiques Sociales et le Développement Local (LASDEL).With interviews and life stories in a sample that represents around 15% of researchers of the country, we examine their trajectories and professional experiences, as well as their opinions on the institutions and research activities in the country.The main research results show that the State of Niger, through its programming policy until the early eighties had promoted training of a great quantity of young people in foreign countries towards higher education, in order to create its own public service. These persons continue their research activities in the same disciplinary domains they were trained, when returning in Niger. When programming existed, the State chose the domains and the institutions in which they would pursue their professional activity. In this way research slowly took roots in the national institutions and the university. After the crisis and structural adjustment programmes, the State had to abandon this programming activity. Scholarships were no more a means to secure a job and didn’t guarantee one would find a position into the higher education system or research.Nonetheless, the very bad salaries and working conditions have changed, largely because of the pressure of the professional union of university personnel. Today the State of Niger is paying close attention to the working conditions of the university and attributes also funding to research, and even if these funds are insufficient, they permit to undertake some research, often in close collaboration with foreign partners as is evidenced by the growth of scientific publications.

The Swedish industrial research institutes are research organisations that exist somewhat in between academy and industry, fulfilling an intermediary role as well as providing a space for research relevant to industrial companies, and they have a history of being funded by both state and industry as a way to support technical research in Sweden. The present study examines the history one of these institutes – the Institute for Surface Chemistry – with respect to three dimensions of its knowledge production: the role that basic and applied research has played for the institute, its external connections and the heterogeneity of its knowledge production, and how it has evaluated the quality of its research. The time period considered is 1975-2005, a challenging time for the Swedish institute sector, and the analysis is based on an interpretation of annual reports, research programs and newsletters from the period, as well as on interviews with institute managers and researchers.This work contributes to a wider research field in two respects. First, it provides input to the ongoing debate about how a changing research system is linked to changes in knowledge production. Second, it increases our knowledge of the Swedish industrial research institute sector, something interesting in its own right but that also can provide input to the ongoing policy reorientation vis-à-vis these institutes. The main novelty of the work is that it engagessystematically and historically with changes in knowledge production within an industrial research institute, something not done in previous studies of the sector. To briefly summarise the results, applied research gradually becomes more important than basic research at the institute, but basic research still keeps playing a rather large role for some time, even as this roleis downplayed in the official publications. At the same time, the institute becomes more heterogeneous in its knowledge production, associates closer with its industrial partners, and loses some of its independent knowledge production in favour of a more classic intermediary role. During the study period, the institute mainly ascertains the quality of its work through the use of traditional academic standards, and it retains a strong publication culture throughout.Three main conclusions are drawn: that the institute generally has oriented itself more towards its industrial partners; that this is the result of adapting to a situation in which the traditional state funding and political support appear ever more insecure; and that in spite of this general dynamic of adaption, the institute, thanks to a unique knowledge base or strong and well-connected actors, has sometimes been able to defend its preferred modes of knowledge production instead of adapting,something which also has had a notable impact on its development.

Las interacciones entre los agentes del sistema de innovación son una pieza clave para el fomento del intercambio de conocimiento, los procesos de aprendizaje y el proceso innovador. El análisis de las interacciones entre universidades y organismos públicos de investigación (ciencia) y los agentes del entorno social (sociedad) ha recibido una gran atención en la comunidad científica, entre otras razones, porque los resultados de estas interacciones pueden tener implicaciones en el diseño de las políticas de ciencia e innovación y en la gestión de la organización. En esta tesis se analizan las interacciones entre los investigadores del área de ciencias sociales y humanidades (CCSSHH) y los agentes sociales, dado que es un colectivo que ha sido escasamente estudiado desde esta perspectiva y presenta características específicas respecto a otros ámbitos científicos. Los tres estudios que componen la tesis abordan aspectos diferentes del tema objeto de estudio y se basan en datos empíricos obtenidos mediante encuestas y entrevistas realizadas en el Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC). El primer estudio pretende averiguar si la utilidad del conocimiento producido en las CCSSHH es menor que en las STEM (acrónimo inglés para ciencia, tecnología, ingeniería y matemáticas), tal como los enfoques de las políticas científicas al uso parecen presuponer al establecer medidas basadas en indicadores difíciles de aplicar a este colectivo (licencias de patentes, contratos de I+D con empresas, creación de spin off). El análisis empírico realizado muestra que los resultados de las investigaciones en CCSSHH no son menos útiles que los de las STEM porque, en ambos casos, hay agentes sociales interesados en ellos. Sin embargo, se aprecia que el tipo de mecanismo de colaboración varía entre áreas del conocimiento, al igual que el tipo de agente social con el cual los investigadores interactúan. Las empresas predominan entre los agentes sociales con los cuales colaboran los investigadores de las STEM mientras que los de CCSSHH colaboran con un grupo más variado de agentes sociales (i.e. administraciones, organizaciones no gubernamentales, etc.). El segundo estudio explora en qué medida los grupos de investigación del área de CCSSHH se relacionan con una variedad de agentes sociales mediante cauces no formalizados. Para ello, se realizan dos análisis complementarios (cuantitativo y cualitativo). Los resultados obtenidos ponen de manifiesto que la mayoría de las relaciones no se formalizan institucionalmente, lo cual significa que la institución no las identifica, registra o valora. Sin embargo, la participación en este tipo de colaboraciones informales, que no tienen necesariamente una contrapartida económica, resulta atractiva por su coste relativamente bajo (en términos económicos y de tiempo), por la ausencia de condiciones restrictivas (p. ej. derechos de propiedad, confidencialidad) y por la existencia de beneficios intangibles para el investigador. El tercer estudio analiza en qué medida los grupos de investigación de CCSSHH interactúan con su entorno mediante diferentes actividades de transferencia de conocimiento (TC) ¿consultoría, investigación contratada, investigación conjunta, actividades de formación e intercambio de personal¿ e identifica los determinantes de cada una de ellas. Los resultados indican que las actividades de TC más frecuentes son la consultoría y la investigación contratada, mientras que el intercambio de personal representa una actividad marginal entre las analizadas. El estudio de los factores que determinan la participación en estas actividades de TC muestra que considerar el potencial uso social de los resultados desde el principio aumenta la participación de los grupos de investigación en todas las actividades de TC analizadas. En conjunto, los tres estudios permiten concluir que la investigación en CCSSHH produce conocimiento y resultados que son de interés para la sociedad. Sin embargo, se diferencian de otras áreas científicas en los mecanismos de interacción predominantes y en la variedad de agentes sociales con los que interactúan. Estas conclusiones pueden tener utilidad práctica para el diseño de políticas destinadas a fomentar el amplio conjunto de interacciones identificadas, para la mejora de las prácticas de gestión y para tratar de evaluar las citadas interacciones mediante indicadores capaces de recoger el amplio espectro de mecanismos identificados en esta tesis. / Interactions among agents in the innovation system are critical for the promotion of knowledge exchange, learning processes and the innovation process. The analysis of interactions between universities or public research organisations (science) and social agents (society) has received great attention in the scientific community because, among other reasons, the results of these interactions can have implications for the design of science and innovation policies and organisation management. This thesis analyses the interactions between researchers in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) and social agents. The SSH community is a collective that has been little studied from this perspective and presents particular characteristics as compared to other scientific fields. The three studies included in the thesis address different aspects of the topic and are based on empirical data obtained through surveys and interviews conducted in the Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC). The first study explores whether the knowledge produced by the SSH is less useful than that produced in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), as science policy seems to presume when establishing measures based on indicators (patent licenses, R&D contracts with companies, creating spin off) that are difficult to apply to the SSH community. The empirical analysis shows that SSH research outputs are no less useful than those from STEM because, in both cases, there are social agents interested in them. However, the preferred type of collaborative mechanism varies across fields, as does the type of agent with whom researchers interact. Firms are the prevailing type of agent collaborating with STEM researchers whilst SSH researchers collaborate with a varied group of social agents (i.e. government, NGOs, etc.). The second study explores the extent to which SSH research groups engage with a variety of social agents through non¿formalized collaborations. To do this, two complementary analyses (quantitative and qualitative) are conducted. Results show that most of the collaborations are not institutionally formalized, which means that the research organisation does not identify, record or value them. However, engagement in these informal collaborations, that do not necessarily have an economic counterpart, are attractive due to the relatively low cost (in time and economic terms) of many such activities, the absence of restrictive conditions (e.g. IPR, confidentiality) and other intangible benefits accruing to the researcher. The third study examines the extent to which SSH research groups interact with social agents through different knowledge transfer (KT) activities ¿consultancy, contract research, joint research, training and personnel mobility¿ and identifies the determinants of each. Results show that the most frequent KT activities are consultancy and contract research, while personnel exchange is a marginal activity among those analysed. The study of the factors determining the engagement in these activities shows that consideration of the social uses of the research outputs from the beginning enhances research groups¿ engagement in all the knowledge transfer activities analysed. Overall, the three studies support the conclusion that SSH research produces knowledge and outputs that are of interest to society. However, differences from other scientific fields are found in terms of the prevalent type of interaction mechanisms used and the variety of social agents with whom interactions are established. These findings may have practical utility for the design of policies aimed at encouraging and enhancing the range of interactions, for improving managerial practices and for the assessment of these interactions through indicators able to capture the type of interactions identified in this thesis. / Olmos Peñuela, J. (2013). Science-Society interactions in the social sciences and humanities:empirical studies of the Spanish Council for Scientific Research [Tesis doctoral]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/31653 / TESIS / Premios Extraordinarios de tesis doctorales