Do Universities Have an Ethical Responsibility to Translate Research?

Recently, when I traveled across the USA and Canada, speaking with some of the highest-impact research universities and innovation precincts in North America, one thing stood out: the idea that universities have a social and ethical responsibility to translate research into real-world impact.

Not just an opportunity. Not just a best practice. But an ethical responsibility—a strong, deliberate choice of words.

Universities sit on an immense body of knowledge, much of it publicly funded, that has the potential to shape government policy, transform industries, improve healthcare, strengthen communities, and create new educational models. Research impact includes commercialising IP and spin-outs, but it’s also about getting knowledge into the hands of the people who need it—whether that’s policymakers, school teachers, healthcare workers, or entire industries.

The Full Picture of Translation

There’s a tendency to equate research translation with startups, spin-outs, and patents—and while those are crucial and deliver an enormous impact, they’re just one part of the picture. Some of the biggest impacts come from research that never gets commercialised in a traditional sense but still shifts the way we live and work.

Translation might mean:

• Governments shaping evidence-based policy instead of making decisions in the dark.

• Healthcare systems applying new clinical research practice to improve patient outcomes.

• Schools using education research to improve literacy rates.

• Businesses integrating cutting-edge AI research into their operations.

• Local communities adopting sustainable practices based on environmental studies.

It’s not about diminishing fundamental research—it’s about ensuring the entire research lifecycle is valued, including the long, sometimes decades-long, process of translation.

Why Call It an ‘Ethical Responsibility’?

Hearing the phrase ethical responsibility over and over in these conversations made me stop and think. It’s a heavy term. It suggests duty, obligation, and accountability—that it’s not just a “nice to have” if universities translate research, but that failing to do so is, in some way, a failing of their core mission.

It also forces the question: Who benefits from our research? If the answer is only other academics, then something maybe a miss.

So What Needs to Change?

If we take this idea of ethical responsibility seriously, then universities need to actively build translation into their DNA. That means:

1. Investing in translation – Dedicated teams that help researchers bridge the gap between academia and the real world.

2. Rethinking incentives – Moving beyond journal publications and grant success as the only markers of achievement.

3. Creating long-term partnerships – Government, industry, and communities need to be engaged early and often.

4. Training researchers in translation – Not everyone is naturally wired for impact-driven work, but the skills can be taught.

5. Embedding translation into research culture – It can’t just be an add-on. It has to be core business.

   
   

The Bottom Line

The best universities I visited weren’t just producing knowledge—they were actively ensuring that knowledge made an impact. That’s the real difference.

If universities want to remain relevant, respected, and publicly supported, they need to embrace their ethical responsibility to translate research. Not just as an afterthought, but as an expectation. Because research that sits in a journal or on a university server, unread and unused, isn’t just a missed opportunity—it’s a failure to deliver on the promise of what universities are meant to do.