Scientific advice through COVID-19
- Submission status
- Closed
- Submission deadline
Across the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted unprecedented levels of interest, engagement and scrutiny of models and mechanisms for scientific advice, and highlighted their essential—if contested—role in policy and decision making. Differing regional, national and international responses to the pandemic provide an opportunity and imperative to explore and compare scientific advice in a range of political and institutional contexts.
Building on this journal’s existing Collection ‘Scientific Advice to Governments’, this new Collection invites contributions on these and related questions:
- How have different regional, national and international governments organised and managed scientific advice over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic?
- Has the operation of scientific advisory bodies followed or deviated from existing government guidelines for feeding expertise into policy judgements?
- Which disciplinary sources of knowledge and expertise have been privileged or disadvantaged in specific advisory mechanisms?
- How have governments navigated and responded to advisory and evidentiary contributions from formal bodies, informal or unofficial sources and individual experts?
- How have ‘the public’ been depicted and imagined within the presentation of scientific advice?
- How has scientific advice been mediated and reported in print, broadcast and social media?
- During COVID-19, how have expert and public debates, divergent views and—at times—misinformation affected the presentation and reception of scientific advice?
- Is scientific advice being communicated in new ways with implications for the presentation and reception of uncertainty and expert judgment?
Research on these topics has the potential to generate impact in at least two ways. First, as the pandemic enters a new phase of uncertainty over issues such as the impact of new COVID-19 variants, and the availability of effective vaccines, a deep understanding of local, regional and global dynamics of science advice are an essential ingredient in ensuring that relevant expert knowledge is being used effectively by decision makers. Second, this research will support processes of reflection on the pandemic, by critically evaluating good and sub-optimal practice in the interaction of experts, politics and publics, and informing future developments in science advisory mechanisms around the world.
This Collection will bring together contributions from around the world, and aims to provide a core resource for high-quality, comparative and interdisciplinary work on diverse aspects of science advice in the pandemic.
The Collection will be highly interdisciplinary and will seek contributions from disciplines including, but not limited to:
- Political science
- Sociology
- Geography
- Public health
- Policy studies and evaluation
- Science and technology studies
- Media and communication studies
Editors
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So Young Kim
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, USA
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Roger Pielke Jr.
University of Colorado Boulder, USA
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Sujatha Raman
Australian National University, Australia
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James Wilsdon
University of Sheffield, UK
