Impact as we have to understand it
Dr Ian Carter
Director of Research and Enterprise
Scholarly Outreach, Impact and Outcomes
The Sixth UCL Bloomsbury Conference
June 2012
What is Impact?
• Journal Impact Factors
• “Economic Impact”
• Socio-economic Innovation
• Beneficial, non-academic outcomes from research findings
-
Economic
Social
Public policy
Cultural
Environmental
Health
Quality of life
Impact: What’s Expected?
• Consider how the results of one’s research might be used, and
by whom
• Report on who has used the results, and to what effect
Research Excellence Framework
Effects
• Identifying case studies is bringing out interesting things
• Showing interesting practices
• Feeds back into enabling practices in the research project itself
• Potential to generate involvement, translation, uptake
• Holds messages for communications, of all sorts
What is Innovation?
“A new way of doing something”
“The translation of ideas / intellectual property (from anywhere)
into socio-economically productive activities”
“Invention is the first occurrence of an idea for a new product or
process, while innovation is the first attempt to carry it out into
practice"
Types of Innovation
• OECD innovation types:
-
Process
Product
Marketing
Organisational
• Policy innovation
• Thought innovation
Perspectives of Innovation
(and hence Impact)
• Corporate
• Governmental
• Research Base
• These overlap, but are not wholly aligned
Purpose of Scholarly
Communications
• Intelligent dissemination to a range of informed audiences, for
multiple purposes
• To publish results, assure quality, and enable replication,
understanding and use by others
• To provide information on projects and outcomes
• To demonstrate interest and capability, for collaborators, funders,
customers, and employers
=> Part of the spectrum of communications
Potential Behavioural Changes
• More active involvement of non-academic beneficiaries in
projects
• A plurality of dissemination mechanisms and activities
• Greater follow-up and recording … which may lead to further
work
• The potential and challenge of Open Data
• A new means of cataloguing and reporting research outcomes?
A Final Word on Impact
“Why, sir, there is every probability that you will soon be able to
tax it!”
Michael Faraday to William Gladstone, the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, when he asked about the practical worth of
electricity.
Questions and Discussion