Category: social impact

In search for creative and embedded research impact

Funding agencies are increasingly seeking to promote more non-linear developmental approaches to research impact. In this post, Natalia Kucirkova, discusses how her research on children’s story making apps presents a useful way for thinking about resea…

The 2014 REF results show only a very weak relationship between excellence in research and achieving societal impact

Results of the 2014 Research Excellence Framework have, in some quarters, been interpreted as evidence of a direct relationship between the quality of scientific outputs and the degree of societal impact generated by researchers. However, such an interpretation, allied to definitions of impact such as that used by Research Councils UK, arguably promotes a stronger reading of the REF results […]

Scientific birds of a feather flock together: science communication on social media rarely happens across or beyond disciplinary boundaries

The success of academic research in reaching out beyond its own scientific community is a perennial concern, even more so following the rapid adoption of social media and the ability to easily transmit information to potentially millions of people. Consequently, many attempts have been made to capture the broad scientific impact beyond academia using social media data. But is increased […]