NORTH-SOUTH CENTRE - ETH - North-South Centre North-South ...
NORTH-SOUTH CENTRE - ETH - North-South Centre North-South ...
NORTH-SOUTH CENTRE - ETH - North-South Centre North-South ...
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Bassirou Bonfoh: I agree with you. Scholarships can contribute<br />
to the strategy or the programme of an institution. By<br />
embedding scholarships one can guarantee long-term success.<br />
The scholarship mechanisms can help to feed the programme<br />
developed by the institution.<br />
Barbara Becker: I think there is another aspect to this longterm<br />
perspective. R4D is implicitly focused on the impact<br />
one wants to achieve, and research funding is normally focused<br />
on the outputs, for example a publication in a journal.<br />
But, in R4D you have the entire sequence from outputs to<br />
outcomes to impact. This takes much longer and ownership<br />
and authorship are more and more diluted. That is another<br />
contradiction between the classical research funding mechanisms<br />
and the expectations of R4D. For example, funding<br />
received for research allows for delivering a publication<br />
in a journal, which, per se, does not have a development impact<br />
as yet. In contrast, the actors on the development side<br />
expect immediate development effects, which research<br />
cannot offer.<br />
Isabel Guenther: I think Barbara’s last point is especially relevant<br />
because nowadays development agencies or private<br />
actors are also funding R4D. They obviously want to see a<br />
direct development impact, which is not possible with research.<br />
At the end of a research project, usually you do not<br />
have a ready-made technology that you just need to implement<br />
in several development programmes. With regard to<br />
publications as an output measure, some research within<br />
R4D might indeed encounter a challenge if it is highly interdisciplinary.<br />
It is not easy to build up your profile with interdisciplinary<br />
research because most journals are very focused<br />
on a specific discipline, making publishing more difficult.<br />
Urs Wiesmann: Yes, but I think the scientists in R4D also<br />
have to take a certain blame. This community was always<br />
very much oriented towards the impact – or trying to fulfil<br />
that unfulfillable goal of impact – and did not take care<br />
enough to build a scientific community, which then supports<br />
scientific growth. What is really needed, I think, is that<br />
global peers start developing scientifically acknowledged<br />
peers in the field of R4D, in the field of transdisciplinarity<br />
and interdisciplinary methodologies. For instance, the socalled<br />
sustainability science is now very strategically occupying<br />
certain high-ranking journals, thus building up their<br />
community. The same is needed in R4D. When you hand in<br />
papers to journals there have to be peers in the review panels.<br />
If a biologist reviews my paper on poverty and biodiversity,<br />
chances are high that it will be rejected, because the<br />
topic is exceeding the disciplinary borders. That is why it is<br />
difficult to publish in high-ranking journals.<br />
Biofortification of zinc in rice, Philippines<br />
MSc student Mulwa Dasel interviewing two herders about<br />
their dietary habits near Isiolo, Kenya<br />
23<br />
FOCUS<br />
Research for development