Scholars may be diversely engaged in boundary-crossing work, either staying more confined in academic settings, or reaching out to the policy world. Despite growing theoretical attention, there is little empirical knowledge on the extent to which scholars indeed engage in boundary-crossing activities, and the conditions that foster or jeopardize this. We use original survey data from European political scientists to investigate how frequently they ‘travel’ to the policy world, what patterns of engagement are visible, and how these are determined. The article introduces a typology capturing different boundary-crossing profiles and shows that political scientists are rather frequent travelers across the border between academia and the policy world. Yet, individual characteristics matter. Having (had) a position outside of academia has an especially strong effect on the likelihood of boundary-crossing. Our results also reveal that not every scholar has the same chance to be involved, depending on gender or seniority.

学者们可能会以不同的方式从事跨界工作，要么更多地局限于学术环境，要么接触政策领域。尽管理论上的关注越来越多，但关于学者们确实从事跨界活动的程度以及促进或危害这种活动的条件，却缺乏实证知识。我们使用欧洲政治科学家的原始调查数据来调查他们“前往”政策世界的频率、可见的参与模式以及这些模式是如何确定的。文章介绍了一种捕获不同边界跨越概况的类型学，并表明政治科学家是跨越学术界和政策界边界的频繁旅行者。然而，个人特征很重要。拥有学术界之外的职位对跨界的可能性有特别强烈的影响。我们的结果还表明，并非每个学者都有相同的参与机会，具体取决于性别或资历。