Pasteur’s Quadrant beyond STEM: How academics engage with society, and whether it matters

Policymakers increasingly expect academics to engage with society and universities to demonstrate their societal impact. This lecture examines academic engagement through the Pasteur’s Quadrant framework developed by Stokes, which distinguishes basic research, detached from application, from applied research, which has immediate uses but often has little connection to fundamental scientific questions. Pasteur’s Quadrant is the sweet spot: research that pursues fundamental understanding while being inspired by use. Existing work has largely confined this idea to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), where use-inspired research yields patentable technologies and commercial products. We argue that the social sciences and humanities (SSH) also occupy Pasteur’s Quadrant but express use-inspiration differently. STEM fields tend to produce codified knowledge suited to intellectual property protection, so their engagement flows through patents and spin-offs. SSH fields tend to produce interpretive, context-dependent knowledge that shapes policy and professional practice, so their engagement flows through consulting and public dissemination, but is harder to document. We test this using a population survey of academics at all eight Danish universities, representative by discipline, seniority, gender and institution, linked to bibliometric data. The results show systematic disciplinary differences. Applied STEM fields concentrate their engagement in formal knowledge transfer to the private sector, SSH fields engage mainly through public dissemination and public-sector consulting, and the medical sciences combine both patterns. Does engagement come at the expense of research? Across all fields, engagement goes hand in hand with research productivity rather than competing with it.