Transdisciplinary research for sustainable development ‐ doing research about research

Research for Sustainable Development

Preface The advancing climate change is one of the most important and most urgent challenges of our time. However, the UN Climate Conference in Copenha-gen in December 2009 made clear how difficult it is to achieve an international agreement on binding climate protection goals. Germany has a pioneering role in climate research and climate modelling, in the development of strategies to adapt to ...

Science Policy for Transdisciplinary Research

Evaluation of Transdisciplinary Research

In an evaluation of transdisciplinary research the progress of research is investigated by comparing the performance with the aims of the research. Due to the complexity and high risk of transdisciplinary research, evaluation is very important to improve the standard of this type of research. (1) Evaluation by the scientific community assesses facts and values of the project from the point of v...

Doing research on the ethics of doing research

In the previous issue of Critical Care Chenaud and colleagues found that most intensive care unit patients who had given informed consent for their participation in a clinical trial could not recall either the purpose of the trial or its related risks several days later. These findings should remind us that informed consent is a process, not an event, but they should not be interpreted to mean ...

Success in Transdisciplinary Sustainability Research

The complexity of sustainable development and societal transitions require both analytical understandings of how coupled human-environment systems function and transdisciplinary science-to-practice approaches. The academic discourse has advanced in developing a framework for defining success in transdisciplinary research (TDR). Further empirical evidence is needed to validate the proposed conce...