More than money - The costs of knowledge exchange at the interface of science and policy

The ever-increasing pressure on marine environments is leading to a growing demand for evidence-informed decision-making, which is supported via interactive knowledge exchange among marine researchers and decision-makers. While there is increasing guidance on how to undertake effective knowledge exchange at the interface of science and policy, there is little information on the monetary and non-monetary costs of such endeavours. As a first step to filling this gap we undertake a narrative review of the literature and illustrate it with individual experiences from four case studies, each of which has implemented a common knowledge exchange strategy within a marine context: knowledge co-production, knowledge brokerage, boundary organisation or social connections/network. Our aim is to: (i) identify the range of costs associated with knowledge exchange activities; (ii) investigate whether the benefits outweigh the costs; and (iii) provide practical considerations to aid planning and budgeting for knowledge exchange projects in the future. We highlight direct (e.g., budget for training, labour, administration, events) and indirect, monetary and non-monetary costs (e.g., emotional effort, trust building) and risks that can occur before, during, and after projects, bearing much invisible effort. We find that the costs and benefits of knowledge exchange efforts are often intangible, hard to measure, underappreciated and insufficiently budgeted for within research projects. Researchers considering knowledge exchange activities must adequately account for preconditions of the research activity (e.g., context and scale) and invest in pre-project effort to make it work (e.g., time and costs involved in building relationships, recruitment/writing proposals), which may need institutional funding. We also recommend that funded project leaders include contingency funds to capitalise on emergent and unforeseen activities, while unfunded project leaders consider an interaction (e.g., a meeting or online conference) to maintain links for future opportunities.