This paper addresses the very important topic of public engagement in research, with a particular focus on energy. The authors categorized the role of the research organisations and researchers in these public engagement projects into five modes, namely, discussing, consulting, involving, collaborating, and supporting and discussed the characteristics of these modes by utilizing some actual examples to illustrate the main points. This paper would make a valuable contribution to the current discussions in this field by differentiating the different modes of public engagement in energy research and identifying a variety of methods and tools available for facilitating the participation of stakeholders.

One issue that would be very critical in promoting public engagement in research is the incentives to researchers in academia. While researchers are encouraged to commit themselves in public engagement, they are at the same time under increasing pressure to publish papers in good journals. Hence it would be crucial to have appropriate incentive structures and frameworks so that academic researchers are encouraged to get involved seriously in interactions with the public. This dimension of institutionalization has been discussed in the literature, including such work as follows:

Yarime, Masaru, Gregory Trencher, Takashi Mino, Roland W. Scholz, Lennart Olsson, Barry Ness, Niki Frantzeskaki, and Jan Rotmans, "Establishing sustainability science in higher education institutions: towards an integration of academic development, institutionalization, and collaborations with stakeholders,"Sustainability Science, 7 (Supplement 1), 101-113 (2012).

It would be very useful if the authors could also discuss how scientists and engineers in academia actually thought about public engagement and responded to societal expectations and how they tried to make a balance or create synergies between the conventional research activities mainly targeted to produce publications and those activities for public engagement. It would also be very interesting to see how the outcomes of various types of activities for public engagement were evaluated and what benefits and difficulties the researchers felt in getting involved in close interactions with various stakeholders in society.

Also it would be important to think about educational impacts of these activities for public engagement on students, particularly master's and doctoral students whose research work is involved in interactions with stakeholders, as the objectives of education, research, and public engagement would not necessarily be compatible with each other.

By considering these dimensions, it would be possible to draw useful lessons and implications for establishing policies and institutional environments in which public engagement by researchers would be promoted further in the future. Perhaps it might be necessary to introduce some changes in the criteria for evaluating the performance of researchers in the process of hiring and promotion in academia.