Outside of specific institutional and organizational settings discussions about ‘impact’ often descend into confusion, as the term holds several meanings for researchers. Responding to a provocation from Ziyad Marar “On Measuring Social Science Impact”…
Category: academic impact
Citation counts reinforce the influence of highly cited papers and nudge us towards undervaluing those with fewer.
In the context of everyday research assessment citation counts are often taken as a simple indicator of the influence of any particular paper. However, all citations are not the same and can be deployed to achieve different ends. Commenting on a recent…
Researchers are expected to share their research beyond academia but they need support from universities to do so
Sharing research beyond academia is not only rewarding and enriching, but increasingly can help achieve funding. However, early career researchers lack the time, skills and media savvy to do so. Margaret Merga and Shannon Mason outline the experiences of early career researchers in Australia and Japan. The authors urge institutions to look beyond traditional scholarly … Continued
The social sciences struggle to be relevant. Can action-oriented research help?
How can the social sciences bridge the divide between abstract theory and idiomatic practice? Max French and Melissa Hawkins propose that one approach following this middle-way is ‘action oriented research’ (AOR). In this post they outline what AOR is and how it can make a strong claim as a route to relevance for the applied … Continued
Book Review: The Impact Agenda: Controversies, Consequences and Challenges by Katherine E. Smith, Justyna Bandola-Gill, Nasar Meer, Ellen Stewart and Richard Watermeyer
In The Impact Agenda, Katherine E. Smith, Justyna Bandola-Gill, Nasar Meer, Ellen Stewart and Richard Watermeyer bring together research about the impact agenda and its policies into one critical discussion to highlight why it creates the controversies, consequences and challenges of the book’s subtitle. Calling on the UK academic community to seize the opportunity to reshape the impact agenda in more positive and … Continued
2019 In Review: Practising research impact
The ways in research shapes and influences the wider world are a key focus of the LSE Impact Blog. This post brings together some of the top posts on the subject of research impact that featured on the Impact Blog in 2019. Invisible impact and insecure academics: structural barriers to engagement and why we should do it anyway Participatory Action […]
Multidisciplinary and cosmopolitan: how openness influences the academic impact of a scholar’s research
The academic impact of a scholar’s research remains of great importance to institutions, particularly business schools. Hyungseok (David) Yoon and Mustapha Belkhouja report on research examining how scholars’ openness to other disciplines and broader collaborations influences their academic impact, as determined by citation analysis. Findings suggest that the career stage of academics is an important factor, with early-career researchers encouraged […]