Neurosociety Media Centre/Neuroglial/Proposal

A proposal to help early career researchers to disseminate neuroscience research findings to policymakers.

Keywords

Neuroscience, policy, engagement, dissemination, Europe

Background

Begin here with strengths in European neuroscience. Emphasise the importance of research carried out by the ENSN and other Neuroscience projects, for example, those listed on this page.

Then discuss the need to strengthen links between young neuroscientists and policymakers.

Discuss the mechanisms currently used by policymakers to find out about the latest neuroscience research.

Difficulties arising because neuroscience outputs are not tailored for policy needs: they are not produced in the right format, or timeframe, for effective use by policymakers.

Give specific examples of policy need: five example organisations, and the types of scientific advice required, and over what timeframes.

Explain why the usual scientific outputs do not fit with these needs.

According to the COST Vademeceum document (Rev 210508), a COST Think Tank is a network of early stage researchers which has the aim of supporting dissemination activities. The COST Think Tank instrument offers early stage researchers with the resources to come together to create policy briefings, scientific publications and other communications, by providing travel, subsistence and dissemination grants for the Think Tank network. If funded, this Action will support the activities of a COST Think Tank which will, over a four year period, create policy briefings and other communications related to neuroscience for European and other international science policy bodies.

Then explain how the current action will enable postdocs from the partners to (i) go on short exchanges with policy bodies (ii) create policy briefings, and (iii) help research feed into European policy in other ways.

Benefits

The benefits of this Action will be a greater societal welfare through the use of leading-edge neuroscience research results in European policy development.

Objectives

COST is widely recognised as an ideal networking support mechanism to ‘tackle problems of societal importance especially in the case of delicate issues arising from new technologies’ (COST 2007; 5)

The primary objective of this Action is to enable early career researchers to disseminate neuroscience research findings to policymakers.

The secondary objective of this Action is to stimulate greater policy support for neuroscience research, through raised awareness of the importance and relevance of neuroscience by policymakers in Europe.

Deliverables

These need to be designed in response to policy user needs. They could include:

Short Term Scientific Missions

Short Term Scientific Missions are exchanges with the aim of strengthening networks by allowing scientists to go to an institution in another COST member state. COST guidelines stipulate that each Action should envisage at least 4 Short Term Scientific Missions per year (for this Action, a target of 20 Short Term Scientific Missions, particularly for Early Stage researchers has been selected).

Policy briefings

Dont forget to find out the cost of disseminating these via AlphaG

Expected Scientific Impact

The expected scientific impact will be a greater esteem of the work of our partners amongst policymakers - the ESF and COST projects which have already been found to be excellent through the ESF peer review process. There is also the potential for a greater support of neuroscience research on the part of policymakers in Europe.

Scientific Programme and Innovation

The Scientific Programme has been chosen by our policy and scientific partners: existing projects, which are funded by COST and ESF. Our scientific partners have identified scientific topics which they believe have implications for policymakers. Also, our policy partners have identified topics for which they require scientific input for policy development.

This Action’s Short Term Scientific Missions will be especially innovative, because it is envisaged that many of them will involve a multi-stage process involving policymakers, patients associations, media regulators and the COST Think Tank. An early stage researcher might, for example, visit a foreign research laboratory and a European policymaker before working as part of the COST Think Tank to produce a policy briefing.

Organisation

The Management Committee, composed of members of the COST/ESF group partners, will be elected, and will supervise and co-ordinate this COST Action as outlined in the ‘Rules and Procedures for implementing COST Actions’ document, COST 270/7.

The Advisory Board will include ESF and COST communications/policy representatives and will be composed of mostly policy and media body representatives to enhance dissemination.

Working Groups:

A: Addiction

B: to be identified by ENSN

C: to be identified by policy partner

D: to be identified by policy partner

Major Milestones

Participants

POLICY

See this page

• International Policy Body 1 has a remit for science and technology policy advice to *****. It has received a number of requests for information on neuroscience from the ****, but many of these requests have these have fallen outside its official remit, which is ****. Its constitution prevents it to helping Parliamentarians with these requests. The unit wishes to work with our think tank to supply EPs with timely information about neuroscience from early-stage career researchers.

• International Policy Body 2 has a remit for Bioethics, which includes issues related to neuroscience. It has identified neuroscience as an area of interest and wishes to develop links with neuroscience researchers to inform its policy work on the ethics of X, Y and Z.

• International Policy Network 3

• International Policy Network 4

• National Policy Body 5

ACADEMIC

See this page.

MEDIA

• Medpedia is a new and growing, repository of medical information, contributed and maintained by health experts around the world, in association with Harvard Medical School, Stanford School of Medicine and the Berkeley School of Public Health.

• SISSA MediaLab