Demonstrating a specialism for research impact is an increasingly sought after attribute for academics, research adjacent staff and growing numbers of impact professionals. Drawing on work carried out to design a course in foundational knowledge for re…
Category: Impact
From backstage to spotlight: A call to highlight the critical role of research software
The environments and infrastructures that support research, such as research software and the engineers who develop it, are increasingly becoming a focus for research policymakers and funders. Eric A. Jensen and Daniel S. Katz present a call for partic…
Two frameworks to support individual and institutional community engagement
Drawing on qualitative evidence from community engaged academics, Wade B. Kelly and Lisa M. Given outline how two frameworks for context-informed, community engagement can support researchers and research institutions to foster social change. Effective…
Why does impact still feel like an add-on to research designs?
Reflecting on his role as an academic and member of a research funding organisation, Duncan Green, considers how impact has in some ways still not become embedded in research culture and is often treated a bureaucratic hurdle to overcome. Because I hav…
Going slow means changing the world at the speed of trust
How does change happen in communities that have been persistently marginalised? Drawing on work for his recent book focused on successful movements for social change, Sascha Haselmayer argues against short-term interventions and fixes and for a ‘slow l…
Crucial! New! Essential! – The rise of hype in research and impact assessment
There has been a marked trend for the increased use of hyperbolic adjectives in academic writing in recent decades. Drawing on a study of REF 2014 impact case studies, Ken Hyland finds this genre to include even greater degrees of hype than research wr…
Lack of diversity in economics holds back its relevance and value to society
From undergraduate, to post-graduate research and practice, the discipline of economics is an outlier in its lack of diversity. Discussing findings from a recent Royal Economics Society report, ‘Who Studies Economics’, Stefania Paredes Fuentes and Tim …
What is Responsible Knowledge Exchange, Engagement and Impact?
Drawing on findings from The Responsible Knowledge Exchange, Engagement and Impact (2021-23) project, Alis Oancea, Aileen Marshall-Brown and Juliet Scott-Barrett outline six factors to consider when designing policies and practices to promote responsib…
Finding time for impact – Policy choices incentivising academic behaviours are not zero-sum games
Research policy increasingly encourages academics to undertake different activities, such as research, teaching and academic service, yet academic time remains finite. Using the introduction of tuition fees in 2012 as a natural experiment within the UK…
Evaluating the emotional impact of art
Many research projects in the humanities and social sciences result in creative and artistic outputs, but whilst a sprawling and contested industry has emerged to monitor and evaluate written research outputs, the impact of visual art is less well unde…