The changing institutional role of academic journals in supporting the creation of societally useful knowledge

There is growing concern with science policy studies that the increasing demands of rigour within academic journals are undermining the potential for published articles to be relevant to societal users. In this chapter, we ask the question of whether it is possible for research that is rigorous (meeting academic standards) to also be relevant (meeting user standards). We approach the relevance characteristic in terms of the cognateness of published knowledge with users, and we measure that cognateness in terms of the way that researchers incorporate external knowledge within their research micro-practices. We assess this framework using two ‘powerful cases’ drawn from management science journal articles for which strong prima facie claims can be made that they are both rigorous and relevant. We analyse the research repertoires that are associated with undertaking research that meets the standards of both kinds of knowledge communities and thereby ensures that academic knowledge production is also potentially societally useful. We conclude by arguing that rigorous and relevant research requires practices where scholars and practitioners develop mutual recognition of the validity and utility of each other&s;s knowledge in efforts to maximise advancing the scientific state-of-the-art.