Transdisciplinary research is a promising approach to address sustainability challenges arising from global environmental change, as it is characterized by an iterative process that brings together actors from multiple academic fields and diverse sectors of society to engage in mutual learning with the intent to co-produce new knowledge. We present a conceptual model to guide the implementation of environmental transdisciplinary work, which we consider a “science with society” (SWS) approach, providing suggested activities to conduct throughout a seven-step process. We used a survey with 168 respondents involved in environmental transdisciplinary work worldwide to evaluate the relative importance of these activities and the skills and characteristics required to implement them successfully, with attention to how responses differed according to the gender, geographic location, and positionality of the respondents. Flexibility and collaborative spirit were the most frequently valued skills in SWS, though non-researchers tended to prioritize attributes like humility, trust, and patience over flexibility. We also explored the relative significance of barriers to successful SWS, finding insufficient time and unequal power dynamics were the two most significant barriers to successful SWS. Together with case studies of respondents’ most successful SWS projects, we create a toolbox of 20 best practices that can be used to overcome barriers and increase the societal and scientific impacts of SWS projects. Project success was perceived to be significantly higher where there was medium to high policy impact, and projects initiated by practitioners/other stakeholders had a larger proportion of high policy impact compared to projects initiated by researchers only. Communicating project results to academic audiences occurred more frequently than communicating results to practitioners or the public, despite this being ranked less important overall. We discuss how these results point to three recommendations for future SWS: 1) balancing diverse perspectives through careful partnership formation and design; 2) promoting communication, learning, and reflexivity (i.e., questioning assumptions, beliefs, and practices) to overcome conflict and power asymmetries; and 3) increasing policy impact for joint science and society benefits. Our study highlights the benefits of diversity in SWS - both in the types of people and knowledge included as well as the methods used - and the potential benefits of this approach for addressing the increasingly complex challenges arising from global environmental change.

跨学科研究是应对全球环境变化所带来的可持续性挑战的一种有前途的方法，因为它的特点是一个迭代过程，该过程将来自多个学术领域和社会各个领域的参与者聚集在一起，以共同创造新成果的方式进行相互学习。知识。我们提出了一个概念模型来指导环境跨学科工作的实施，我们认为这是一种“科学与社会”（SWS）方法，并提供了建议的活动来贯穿七个步骤。我们对全球168位参与环境跨学科工作的受访者进行了一项调查，以评估这些活动的相对重要性以及成功实施这些活动所需的技能和特征，并注意回答根据性别，地理位置和受访者的位置而有何不同。灵活性和协作精神是SWS中最常被重视的技能，尽管非研究人员倾向于优先考虑诸如谦逊，信任和耐心等属性而不是灵活性。我们还探讨了成功实现SWS的障碍的相对重要性，发现时间不足和动力动力学不平等是成功实现SWS的两个最重要障碍。结合对受访者最成功的SWS项目的案例研究，我们创建了一个包含20种最佳实践的工具箱，可用于克服障碍并增加SWS项目的社会和科学影响。在政策影响中等到较高的情况下，项目成功率要高得多，与仅由研究人员发起的项目相比，由从业者/其他利益相关者发起的项目对政策的影响更大。与项目结果交流给从业者或公众的频率要比与实践者或公众交流的频率高，尽管这在总体上不那么重要。我们讨论了这些结果如何为未来的SWS提出三点建议：1）通过仔细的合作伙伴关系形成和设计来平衡不同的观点；2）促进沟通，学习和反思（即质疑假设，信念和做法），以克服冲突和权力不对称现象；3）加大政策影响，以促进科学和社会的共同利益。