Section 1. What is research impact?
There is no agreed definition of research impact, even though it is a term that is widely used. If we focus on the Research Excellence Framework, that brings together an encompassing definition, where most academic subjects can find a way to demonstrate their impact.
The Research Excellence Framework (REF) defines impact as “ the demonstrable contribution that excellent research makes to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond the academic community”.
The key words here are “beyond the academic community”. Academics are now well versed in the metrics of publications; citation rates, journal impact factors and the narratives of ‘three and four star’ manuscripts. However, what REF 2028 is asking for is much clearer evidence of research impact beyond the academy walls.
When I came into academia more than 20 years ago, I wanted to do research that made a difference – that led to improvements for other people. Naively, I thought I will do my research and then the evidence produced will be taken up and used, if the results show the interventions and products, I develop work. Unfortunately, no matter how good the idea, intervention or process that is developed, it rarely gets taken up, the change must be actively driven to realise the real-world impact of the research.
In this workshop, whether face to face, online or delivered asynchronously I will provide you with different ideas about the many ways your research can have impact. The materials will provide you with ideas and tools to assist you to increase the uptake of your research more widely and suggest tools and methods that you can use to evidence the impact.
One of the first things we need to understand is the role of research. In the past research has often been seen as an end its own right. We train and develop academics to write great research grant and fellowship applications and to publish in prestigious journals and give award-winning presentations. Research, however, should be part of a process, its meant to be a tool to assist in solving a problem. Research provides the evidence of what does or does not work or what needs to be tested. There is a further major undertaking to get the research findings taken up and used, so that it can have the impact for which the research was originally funded.
Understanding impact and knowledge exchange makes you a better researcher because you can pinpoint from the outset what difference your work will make. This will increase your opportunity to obtain funding and help you work more efficiently to achieve your research goals.
1.2 Why is evidence of impact required by universities?
Evidence of impact is increasingly sought by funders because they want to justify how and where tax-payers money is spent. There are so many calls on government or charity support, they want to be able to show where the money goes and the improvements that result from it. In the past researchers have often investigated their own areas of interest and the questions that they thought were important. Increasingly, funding organisations are requiring researchers to tackle questions that can actively make a difference and that stakeholders think is important.
With large amounts of public money spent on research, there has been a growing expectation that any research carried out will have an impact. The type and amount of impact will vary from one subject area to the next but there is an expectation that researchers receiving funding are expected to show how the research has made a difference in some observable way. Note I say observable rather than measurable? I’ll come back to this later.