Impact – is there a role
for the publisher?
Dr Martyn Lawrence
Senior Publisher
E: mlawrence@emeraldinsight.com
Can publishers have an impact?
• Publishers should be
contributing to the
debate and helping to
demonstrate impact
• What has Emerald
already done?
• We suggest a tentative
framework by which
impact can be measured
and assessed
Why does Emerald care about impact?
• Impact is now central to REF, CAGS, AACSB, EFMD etc
• Emerald has a long-standing Publishing Philosophy:
- to bridge the gap between theory and practice
- to publish research underpinned by rigour & relevance
- to publish ‘research you can use’
• This is not a new/UK-centric/commercial approach!
• Surely scholars in business and management have an
obligation to demonstrate the impact of their research on
… businesses and managers?
Ongoing Emerald initiatives
• Publishing workshops
– Improve title, share research, better keywords
• Research awards
– Social impact, long-term impact, practical
impact (plus other funding awards)
• Structured abstracts
– Research/practical/social implications of paper
• Emerald Management First
– Repackaged research for practitioners
Abstract from highly-downloaded paper
Ongoing Emerald initiatives
• Publishing workshops
– Improve title, share research, better keywords
• Research awards
– Social impact, long-term impact, practical
impact (plus other funding awards)
• Structured abstracts
– Research/practical/social implications of paper
• Emerald Management First
– Repackaged research for practitioners
Impact of research
• Conventionally,
impact is measured
through citation
• Emerald encourages
authors to measure
research impact on
a much wider scale,
using more than one
variable
Citation is critical … but
“The use of citation measures is perfectly understandable
but also completely crazy.
One of the easiest ways to get lots of citations is to be
interestingly wrong.”
Søren Holm, “A Theoria Round Table on Philosophy Publishing”
(Theoria 77.2, 104-116, May 2011)
“If I could get rid of the Impact Factor tomorrow, I would. I
hate it… It totally distorts decision-making and it is a
very, very bad influence on science”
Richard Horton, Editor of The Lancet (Impact Factor: 28.409)
Additional measures of quality?
Even within the ‘knowledge’ segment, there are other
indicators of quality:
• number of downloads (non-‘star’ journals have high
usage)
• dissemination of journal (where it is read)
• quality of the authors/editors
• relevance of content and publishing ethos
• links to societies/associations
Six Impact Zones
•
•
•
•
•
•
Knowledge – scholarship which contributes to the body of knowledge and
generates further research.
Assessed by: citations, usage, peer recognition, self-stated research conclusions
Teaching and learning – students and faculty are direct consumers of research.
Assessed by: clarity of conclusions to aid learning, provision of case studies and
teaching examples, usage statistics, course adoption/curricula change.
Practice – business leaders, practitioners and consultants are all affected by the
outcomes of research.
Assessed by: university-business collaboration, consultancy application,
implications for practice self-stated
Public policy – state officials, politicians, decision makers in public bodies,
institutions and charities draw on research to shape their policies.
Assessed by: self-stated potential implications, subsequent policy revisions
Society and environment – influencing CSR in industry, business and public
policy and the incorporation of social/environmental values in research outputs.
Assessed by: informing social policy, industry adoption, implications for society
self-stated
Economy – research which contributes to organization-level or macro-level wealth
creation and business advancement. Assessed by: future economic savings,
revenue increase, self-assessed business/economic impact.
Impact matrix – at its simplest, we assign a
score 1-5 for each impact zone
EXAMPLE: Orientation to ‘pure’
research and scholarship:
EXAMPLE: Applied/action
research
Knowledge 5
Knowledge 2
Practice 1
Practice 5
Teaching & Learning 3
Teaching & Learning 3
Policy 2
Policy 4
Society & Environment 2
Society & Environment 4
Economic 0
Economic 4
The X Factor
• Sometimes research
will change, challenge
or disrupt current
thinking
• Any quantitative matrix
needs to remember
the disruptive paper
that may go uncited or
unnoticed for years
• But they are rare
Conclusion
• Publishers do have a role to play in demonstrating impact
• We are gathering comments and ideas from our colleagues
– editors, reviewers, research directors, deans, funding
bodies, assessment bodies – and overwhelmingly they
support our initiatives
• Our impact matrix is a framework for discussion
• We plan to report on progress at conferences and in
published ‘white papers’
• If there is something we can do, please get in touch!