Dr Shirley Shivangulula
More often than not, the generic perception of a public good exerts an understanding of infrastructural setups. These include roads and transport, communication and broadcasting, power and water supply, national defence and environmental protection, and public health. Inadvertently, the said perception, in ordinary public dialogue, overlooks knowledge production or scientific research as a public good. The rationale for this exists. In all probability, the awareness of the value of research requires prominence. Supplementarily, the disassociation between funding of research and its public utilisation, requires economic reflection.
A public good, distinctly different from capital good, is a social good to which people have access and natural consumption without competition. Thus, a public good exhibit two prominent features namely, non-rivalry and non-excludability. The former guarantees the accessibility of all persons, singly or collectively, instantaneously or consecutively, to utilising a product without impacting its availability to future consumers. The latter is the unfeasibility principle signifying that it is unfeasible to preclude others from utilising the product. Accordingly, the perception depicting roads as public goods is accurate as they can, simultaneously, be driven on by multiple persons without using them up. Unvaryingly, the use of the road by one person does not reduce the utilisation of such road by another person.
Equally, research results accessible to people, simultaneously and collectively, physically or online, without competition and depletion of the research information, make research a public good. This understanding should be entrenched in the ordinary public discourse with the enlightenment of what is meant by the term research.
Derived from the French word “Recerchier” or “rechercher”, the etymology of research dates back 16th century ago. The word “research” consists of two words namely, “re” which means “again” or over again or once more. ’Search’, which is to seek or explore or examine or investigate. Thus, to research is to search again to create knowledge and establish facts. This is what Rose referred to as early as 1962 “facts do not simply lie around waiting to be picked up. Facts must be carved out of the continuous web of ongoing reality”. A search is necessary to fill a gap, and confirm or refute claims. Scientific research, be it an architectural blueprint or iterative pursuit or amalgamation of the deductive or inductive search, should be, amongst others, systematic and replicable.
Namibia’s Research, Science and Technology Act, 2004 (Act No. 23 of 2004) depicts public good research as any research, scientific or technological activity the outcome of which is of public interest and the result of which is available to the general public”.
The Act also recognises research as the “systematic investigation or analysis into, and study of, materials, sources and the physical universe in order to establish facts and knowledge and reach conclusions” This legal stance sets forth a lucid understanding of a scientific and public good research.
Fundamentally, a culture of scientific research holds considerable benefits for an economy. These include addressing mental health – a prominent Covid-pandemic generated phenomenon unsetting the human resource functioning in several economies. This is qualified by Leann Zarah that the necessity and value of research in our daily lives “provide nourishment and exercise for the mind” in that the “acts of searching for information and thinking critically serve as food for the brain, allowing our inherent creativity and logic to remain active” and that “keeping the mind active may also help prevent certain mental illnesses like Alzheimer’s”. A culture of scientific research in an economy offers further benefits including solving pressing socio-economic impairments, such as youth unemployment and intergenerational poverty traps and transmission.
So, how do we create a culture of scientific research to reap its benefits as a public good? There are several approaches. Knowledge creation at an early stage by introducing scientific research in secondary school rather than reserving it for tertiary education is one such approach. To this end, Subahan Mohd Meerah and Nurazidawati Mohamad Arsad are some of the Researchers who researched on “developing research skills at secondary school” level in the Social Sciences in Malaysia. They found that “the students not only enjoyed the research task … but acquired research skills and gained the experience of doing research”.
A solid research terrain at an early stage; encompassing the philosophical ground with its epistemological, ontological, axiological stances, in tandem with the paradigmatic traditions, and theoretical premises, method competency and adherence to research standards would yield a natural flow of scientific research as a public good in an economy.
*Dr Shirley Shivangulula is an Economic & Industrial Sociologist, Director of Workmanship Consultations Proprietary Limited – a Namibian-based Research Institute on Socio-Economic Research, and Consultancy. Her expertise are at the intersection of the Economies of Finance and Labour and Higher Education Policy, amongst others.