Researcher’s Social Responsibility: Challenges and Solutions

Abstract

Research plays an important role in any major development, and higher education institutions are expected to produce research to contribute to development. Research production and dissemination through scholarly avenues are expected from faculty in higher education institutions around the world. Scholars may have different reasons why they conduct, produce, and disseminate the outputs of research. Among them, one common and less discussed aspect they all share is their social responsibility. This topic is not commonly discussed in scholarly circles, although it is incidentally scattered across the fields. Based on a careful analysis of the existing literature, this paper is meant to bring this discussion to light by synthesizing seven major social responsibility problems and proposing some practical paths that researchers can take while conducting, disseminating, and implementing the outcome of their research studies. The seven major social responsibility problems were gleaned from a thematic analysis of the existing literature. The proposed guidelines are meant to guide researchers to address their social responsibility while they generate more discussion to make this issue of researchers’ social responsibility more visible in scholarly circles.