Books and Articles

The list will never be complete and we are always seeking to update our inventory.

We encourage you to visit the site regularly and send us your links to add to this section.

Paul Cairney, The Politics of Evidence-Based Policy Making, Palgrave Macmillan UK (2016)

Tateo Arimoto, Yasushi Sato, Keiko Matsuo & Hiroyuki Yoshikawa: Scientific Advice, Science, Technology, and Policy Making in the Twenty-First Century, University of Tokyo Press (2016) ISBN 978-4-13-060316-4.

Justin Parkhurst: The Politics of Evidence, Routledge (2016). From evidence-based policy to the good governance of evidence.

Simon Bastow et al: The Impact of the Social Sciences: How Academics and Their Research Make a Difference, Sage (2014). Recommended by Phil Campbell, Editor in Chief of Nature

Heather Douglas: Science, Policy and the Value-Free Ideal, University of Pittsburgh Press (2009). Douglas explores the role of values in science and the inadequacy of the ideal that science can and should be values-free.

Sheila Jasanoff: Science and Public Reason, Routledge (2012). Jasanoff examines how democratic governments make use of evidence and argument to legitimize decisions and be accountable to citizens.

Roger Pielke: The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics, Cambridge University Press (2007). Pielke examines the range of options of roles that scientists can play in policy and politics.

William T. Golden (ed.): Science Advice to the President, AAAS Press, 2nd Edition (1993)

NEW: Christl A. Donnelly, Ian Boyd, Philip Campbell, Claire Craig, Patrick Vallance, Mark Walport, Christopher J. M. Whitty, Emma Woods & Chris Wormald, 2018. Four principles to make evidence synthesis more useful for policy Nature 558, 361-364 (2018) | doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-05414-4
Deluyker H, 2017. Is scientific assessment a scientific discipline? EFSA Journal 2017;15(11):e15111, 51 pp.
Kowarsch, M., Jabbour, J., Flachsland, C., Kok, M.T.J., Watson, Sir R., Haas, P.M., et al. (2017). A road map for global environmental assessments. Nature Climate Change 7(6), pp.379-382.
Jeffrey Hutchings and Nils Stenseth: Communication of Science Advice to Government. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, January 2016, Vol. 31, No. 1.
Arthur C. Petersen : The Ethos of scientific advice: a pragmatist approach to uncertainty and ignorance in science and public policy. Published in H. de Regt and C. Kwa, eds. (2014), Building Bridges: Connecting Science, Technology and Philosophy – Essays presented to Hans Radder, Amsterdam: VU University Press, pp. 53–62.

Ottomar Edenhofer and Martin Kowarsch: Cartography of pathways: A new model for environmental policy assessments. Environmental Science & Policy 51: 56-64 (2015)

Robert Doubleday and James Wilsdon: Beyond the great and the good. Nature 485: 301-302 (2012)

Claire Dunlop: The temporal dimension of knowledge and the limits of policy appraisal: biofuels policy in the UK. Policy Sciences 43: 343-363 (2010). Political paper recommended by Brian Collins that describes the brokering function between government, science and policy.

Heather Douglas: Inserting the public into science. In Sabine Maasen and Peter Weingart (eds), Democratization of Expertise: Exploring Novel Forms of Scientific Advice in Political Decision-Making – Sociology of the Sciences vol 24, pp 153–169 (2005)

Jack Stilgoe, Simon Lock & James Wilsdon: Why should we promote public engagement with science? Public Understanding of Science 23: 4-15 (2014)

Research Fortnight: Chief Scientist World: Global Science Advice special, Auckland, August 2014 (2014). Special supplement from Research Fortnight, an independent source of news, analysis, funding opportunities and jobs for the academic community.

From University of Waterloo, article by Heather Douglas: Scientific Integrity in a Politicized World