Can you have your cake and eat it too? Managing societal and scientific impacts in transdisciplinary research

Ideal-typical transdisciplinary research (TDR) aims to generate impacts both in science and society. This results in challenges for everybody who is involved. This article sheds light on this ambivalent field of TDR and introduces a Special Section of two articles addressing the tensions that may emerge when aiming for impacts in both realms. With this opening article, we present institutional, individual, and project strategies that enable and support TDR, and we reveal ambivalences that arise from their interplay with the current academic system.