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Minimum Viable Skills for Knowledge Broker

“Knowledge broker” is a blanket term used to identify individuals or teams who, in a variety of contexts, act as intermediaries to facilitate the knowledge transfer from experts of a specific domain to a wider audience.

The practice of knowledge brokerage covers diverse use cases, that have the common objective of disseminating scientific information and facilitating its usage by society. Typical cases include appointed individual experts or expert groups

  • informing public authorities or agencies about scientific findings, or
  • aggregating research data to provide an overview of a specific phenomenon or field, thus
  • supporting the practice of evidence-based decision making,
  • providing trustable and understandable information to laypeople,
  • etc.

Knowledge Brokers typically use their expertise to connect people with the information and resources they need to make informed decision, filling the gaps between science and various stakeholders, such as policymakers, practitioners, or the public. Sometimes this role is played by a group of people as commitees or societies.

Sub-type: Honest Broker

Mission

The knowledge broker plays a crucial role in bridging the gap between research and practice by connecting researchers with stakeholders who can benefit from their work. The knowledge broker helps to create a more open, transparent, and collaborative research environment, which can lead to more effective and impactful research outcomes. This may involve working closely with researchers to translate their findings into actionable recommendations or providing policymakers with access to the latest accessible scientific evidence to inform decision-making. Additionally, they may be involved in promoting Open Science practices within their organization or community, such as advocating for open access publishing or developing data sharing policies and support the dissemination of research findings to a wider audience.

OS Activities

  • Bridge the interface between science and policy
  • Ensure mutual understanding among these parties
  • Ensure alignment between the needs of the policy community and the evidence synthesis provided
  • Ensures that the policy community have a good understanding of the implications of the evidence proffered
  • Ensure the quality and transparency of evidence synthesis
  • Ensure the evidence synthesis had appropriate expert inputs
  • Identify options and and providing advice from a scientific viewpoint
  • Identify constraints, uncertainties and caveats
  • Contextualise the FAIR and OS principles of specific domains
  • Identify strengths and weaknesses in how OS is applied
  • Identify needs of change in OS policy or practice in relevant research domains
  • Ensure all actors are engaged in co-creation actions

OS Outcomes

The Knowledge Broker contributes to multiple Open Science outcomes by facilitating the dissemination and accessibility of research findings, fostering collaboration and knowledge exchange among diverse stakeholders, and promoting transparency and reproducibility in research. The main objective of the Honest Broker is to support ‘'evidence informed policy making’' by serving as the link and catalyst for knowledge synthesis and exchange between researchers and policymakers. In reaching these aims, the Knowledge Broker and Honest Broker support the uptake of Open Science and FAIR principles during the knowledge production process to maximise its impact and improve both accessibility and transparency of research findings. This is mainly achieved through the following:

  • identifying the information needs of reference stakeholders/interlocutors and addressing them by bridging specialised scientific data and information and facilitate the stakeholders’ understanding and correct interpretation of this information
  • analyzing, evaluating, and drafting concrete policy options, but also building capacity and create links for continuous knowledge exchange, adopting as much as possible co-creation and accessible approaches
  • linking knowledge producers and users and objectively facilitating or directly translating science into policy-usable knowledge in a transparent and accessible way
  • enhancing the uptake of scientifically developed knowledge into public policy by supporting the application of Open Science and FAIR principles in the knowledge production chain
  • identifying options, helping policymakers understand the likely impact of choices, and providing advice from a scientific viewpoint
  • helping researchers understand the potential impact of their outcomes to policy makers
  • advocating on the application of FAIR principles and Open Science, identifying how these principles relate to research goals and practices, and to the organisation’s local policies and processes

Essential Skills and Competences

Technical skills and competences

  • Being familiar with policy making practices and procedures
  • Understanding of open, ethical and responsible research principles
  • Managing considerable amount of information related to OS practices
  • Searching, retrieving, appraising and synthesizing evidence
  • Developing and maintaining network of researchers, policymakers, and other stakeholders to help promoting and implementation of OS practices and to support co-creation activities
  • Providing training and education to researchers, policymakers, and public citizens about OS practices
  • Evaluating research findings and identify potential conflicts of interest
  • Tailoring resources to local needs and assessing the context of implementation

Soft/ transversal skills

  • Communication
  • Collaboration
  • Leadership
  • Self-confidence
  • Citizens and stakeholders engagement skills
  • Influencing skills
  • Mediation skills
  • Negotiation and diplomacy
  • Team building and teamwork
  • Problem-solving skills
  • Innovative thinking
  • Analytical and research skills
  • Adaptability to changes
  • Networking skills
  • Interpersonal skills
  • Stakeholder management and influencing skills
  • Mentoring skills
  • Facilitation skills
  • Change management skills
  • Improvement skills
  • IT skills

Link to any other MVS that this MVS is based on (from those in Skills4EOSC D2.1)

Reference sources

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  2. Timo P. Karjalainen Lauri Rantala, Simo Sarkki and Pekka M. Rossi. How to earn the status of honest broker? scientists’ roles facilitating the political water supply decision-making process. Society & Natural Resources, 30(10):1288–1298, 2017. URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1331484, arXiv:https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2017.1331484, doi:10.1080/08941920.2017.1331484. ↩

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  5. Angus Whyte at al. Eoscpilot fair4s (skills and capability framework). 2018. URL: https://eoscpilot.eu/sites/default/files/eoscpilot-d7.3.pdf (visited on 2024-03-16). ↩

  6. James Conklin, Elizabeth Lusk, Megan Harris, and Paul Stolee. Knowledge brokers in a knowledge network: the case of seniors health research transfer network knowledge brokers. Implementation Science, 8(1):7, Jan 2013. URL: https://doi.org/10.1186/1748-5908-8-7, doi:10.1186/1748-5908-8-7. ↩

  7. German Council for Scientific Information Infrastructures (RfII). Digital competencies – urgently needed! – recommendations on career and training prospects for the scientific labour market. 2019. ↩

  8. Ge Peng, Nancy A. Ritchey, Kenneth S. Casey, Edward J. Kearns, Jeffrey L. Prevette, Drew Saunders, Philip Jones, Tom Maycock, and Steve Ansari. Scientific Stewardship in the Open Data and Big Data Era Roles and Responsibilities of Stewards and Other Major Product Stakeholders. D-Lib Magazine, May 2016. URL: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may16/peng/05peng.html (visited on 2024-03-16), doi:10.1045/may2016-peng. ↩

  9. Lene Topp, David Mair, Laura Smillie, and Paul Cairney. Knowledge management for policy impact: the case of the european commission's joint research centre. Palgrave Communications, 4(1):87, Jul 2018. URL: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-018-0143-3, doi:10.1057/s41599-018-0143-3. ↩

  10. Robert Lee Yahong Zhang and Kaifeng Yang. Knowledge and skills for policy making: stories from local public managers in florida. Journal of Public Affairs Education, 18(1):183–208, 2012. URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/15236803.2012.12001677, arXiv:https://doi.org/10.1080/15236803.2012.12001677, doi:10.1080/15236803.2012.12001677. ↩

  11. The Turing Way Community. The Turing Way: A handbook for reproducible, ethical and collaborative research. February 2023. URL: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7625728, doi:10.5281/zenodo.7625728. ↩