Best wishes,
the AESIS Team
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Anika Duut van Goor (Director), Toby Smith (Boardmember) & Frank Zwetsloot (Founding Director)
at our Washington conference last week
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6-8 November, 2019
12 November, 2019
13-15 November, 2019
19-20 November, 2019
27-29 November, 2019
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AESIS Course, ‘Methods & Instruments for Assessing the Societal Impact of Research', London,UK
Researchfish Conference, 'Strategy of Impact', London, UK
Canadian Science Policy Conference (CSPC 2019), Ottawa, CA
AESIS Course, 'Access to EU Research Funding for Universities of Applied Sciences’, Brussels, Belgium
AESIS Course, 'Integrating Societal Impact in a Research Strategy', Oslo, Norway
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Thank you for joining us at an inspiring SSH Conference in Washington DC
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"Another AESIS conference that has pushed my current thinking and challenged me to entertain new ways of doing things."
"One of the most engaging, informative and thought-provoking conferences I have attended."
Last week, on October 17th & 18th, we were the proud organizers of the first Impact of Social Science and Humanities conference in the United States, bringing worldwide experiences and best practices together in an attempt to stimulate and assess the Impact of SSH in the US and beyond.
Under the leadership of Alan Leshner (American Association for the Advancement of Science) and Arthur "Skip" Lupia (National Science Foundation, US), targetted recommendations have been formulated by the chairs of the (break-out) sessions (which will soon be available on the AESIS+ Platform), contributing to our collaborative advocacy for the role of SSH in addressing societal challenges.
A huge thank you to all attendees for joining us in this important conversation!
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Assessing Societal Impact of Science
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Sweden's Research Assessment Exercise 2020
Johan Blaus (Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden)
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KTH, Royal Institute of Technology, in Sweden is preparing the Research Assessment Exercise 2020, (RAE2020). The aim is to develop KTH's research via self-assessments and constructive feedback from peer reviewers. It is the third time that a comprehensive assessment of the KTH's research with external experts in peer review panels is done. Previous assessments were carried out in 2008 and 2012.
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In RAE2012 Impact and engagement with society were included as a perspective for the first time, in a framework similar to REF2014, UK. The exercise generated 47 Impact statements and 94 Impact cases and led to continued development work in Impact at KTH. One part of the development work has been the appointment of Impact leaders in the faculty, a role that supports the organization to develop impact strategies and inspires colleagues to increase their efforts to create, capture and communicate Impact. The self-evaluation for RAE2020 will be made during spring 2020 and the expert peer review panels will have a site visit to KTH in the end of August. Impact and engagement will be assessed in RAE2020 via three parts: 1) Impact statements, 2) Impact pathways, and 3) Impact cases.
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Societal impact measured by connectedness of research – ABC to society
Ed Noyons (Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), The Netherlands)
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The impact of scientific research on society has many dimensions. These cannot be captured by a single measure. Moreover, research is a collective effort and depends on the collaboration of many actors. Therefore, measuring or monitoring the societal impact on the level of the actor (a university, department or individual researcher) is flawed.
Recently, a new way of looking at the societal impact was launched and published (Noyons, 2018, 2019) under the name of Area-based Connectedness (ABC) to society. The core idea of this approach is that actors should be assessed on societal impact through their contribution to societally connected research areas. To quantify the relation between societal issues and research, we should look at existing signals between these two: signals of connectedness. A research area is more connected to society than another if these signals are stronger or denser. Connectedness to society then describes the extent to which research has found its way into society or the extent to which research is mobilized as societally relevant. Read more
Ed Noyons will further elaborate on Area-based Connectedness during the first day of the AESIS course 'Methods and Instruments for Assessing the Societal Impact of Research at King's College Londen.
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Impact assessment & the Sustainable Development Goals
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Last month, Times Higher Education (THE) presented the metrics for the THE University Impact Rankings 2020. For the first year, the metrics will be based on all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). You can find out more about the details of the new metrics here.
The SDGs are becoming increasingly important for the evaluation of research impact. This report by the GUNI network explores how the SDGs can be implemented in higher education institutes. When it comes to evaluating research institute's contribution to the SDGs, Carma Gual notes that it must be checked whether reported achievements on the SDGs are sustainable or whether the institutes merely use these achievements to create a more positive and 'green' image (without genuinely contributing to the SDGs). Gual refers to the latter phenomenon as ‘SDG-washing”. Thomas Jorgensen offers critique on the THE impact ranking, as it would consider the individual SDGs and without measuring universities’ effort to promote the SDGs as a common framework (which is arguably far more difficult to measure). What do you think?
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Oxford University Innovation's work on Measuring Impact
Serena de Nahlik (Oxford University Innovation, United Kingdom)
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Recently, OUI has been developing more purpose-driven projects than ever before, including three social enterprises – Greater Change, sOPHIa and Rogue Interrobang. As a result, we have been increasingly grappling with the concepts behind impact measurement. Key to measuring impact is to understand whether your activities are achieving your intended impact, and how you could increase impact with the same resources.
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It’s crucial to think about the intended outcomes from a spinout’s activities early on. What are the company’s long-term goals? What outcomes and activities need to be in place to achieve these? Who are the beneficiaries? A Theory of Change can help a company identify its intended impact, and construct a list of measures that will prove that the intended impact is happening as a result of the company’s activities.
Continue reading here.
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Introducing the International Center for the Study of Research
Petra Ullrich (Elsevier, The Netherlands)
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Launched in 2019, the mission of the ICSR (www.icsr.net) is to cultivate the thoughtful use of metrics and indicators in research evaluation and to promote evaluation best practices. The Center is tasked with developing, characterising and validating new and existing research metrics, indicators and research assessment practices; it also supports independent, external studies on topics within this scope. The ICSR works in partnership with a geographically diverse Advisory Board comprised of experts in research, research evaluation, policy and research management. ICSR has recently published Perspectives on how patterns of authorship are evolving in response to the pressures of ‘publish or perish’, and how ‘pre’-prints don’t always appear before their corresponding published journal version; learn more on the Elsevier website.
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Assessing and Rewarding the Impact of Research
Aleksandrs Mārtiņš Blūms (Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Latvia)
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Latvia – like many countries is trying to evaluate and reward the societal, policy, environmental and economic impact of publicly funded research. For many years there has been a discussion around the use of Altmetrics – various tools have been developed which promise useful insights to research policy-makers. Unfortunately, none of these tools are useful on the operational level due to a mismatch between the underlying data sources and the actual pathways to impact, issues with the recognition of content in the Latvian language and a risk of abuse if funding decisions are based on the scores. We can easily demonstrate this by e.g. noting the low accuracy of research mentions in policy documents in Altmetrics databases. Read more
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New Report Looks at Steps toward Impact Measurement
SAGE Publications (United States)
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A reasonable starting point for assessing impact begins with the full scholarly community believing that impact metrics are useful, necessary, and beneficial. But fearful of overly quantitative measurements that risk distorting scholarly discovery, allow gaming the system, or dehumanize the research effort, not everyone is on board. This in turn means some of the people who matter most – not our peers, but our funders – will develop their own metrics, such as the U.S. Department of Defense’s nascent AI-influenced SCORE system for social science. Against this backdrop, earlier this year SAGE Publishing released The Latest Thinking About Metrics for Research Impact in the Social Sciences, a report which summarizes key points from a workshop SAGE convened on research impact.
The workshop and the report focused on social and behavioral science; social science is not STEM, and social science’s impact measurements may echo STEM’s but are unlikely to mirror them. (You can follow the conversation around impact on SAGE’s Social Science Space website, with its new section dedication to impact being a good starting point.)
Two issues undergird the report – that traditional “literature-based” measurements of impact (i.e. citation counting) are insufficient on their own for modern demands to show value to funders, policymakers, or the public; and that new technologies make new ways of measuring impact possible. Read more on Social Science Space.
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Course
"Methods & Instruments for Assessing the Societal Impact of Research"
6-8 November - London, UK
How can you create a system of tools that fits your public research institute and to what extent are you dependent on the current providers? If you create your own ‘system’ for assessing impact, how does this system relate to existing impact rankings, your internal system of evaluating the performance of your researchers and your accountability towards research funders and strategic stakeholders? And how does your impact strategy relate to the existing research strategy?
This course will create insight into the currently available instruments and methods to measure such impact and how to implement this in your Research Strategy.
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Course
"Access to EU Funding for Universities of Applied Sciences"
19-20 November - Brussels, Belgium
This 2-day course invites research managers and administrators to profit from the knowledge of our Impact and EU experts and put these insights to practice. The course will map out the manners in which Universities of Applied Sciences can best benefit from the possibilities of EU research, as regards Horizon Europe and other available EU programmes. We will discuss the political positioning of Universities of Applied Sciences in EU-context, as well as how you, as a representative of Universities of Applied Sciences, can best prepare for pooling resources from the EU.
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Exploring the Use of Research Evidence in Policy and Practice
Drew Gitomer (Rutgers Graduate School of Education, United States)
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Drew Gitomer and Kevin Crouse, with support from the W.T. Grant Foundation, recently released a monograph entitled, Studying the Use of Research Evidence: A Review of Methods. The monograph stems from a growing concern about the use of research evidence (URE) and the extent to which it is used in policy and practice. The research focuses on the research methods that scholars have used to come to understand how and how frequently research is used, what factors influence URE, and what outcomes are associated with URE.
The monograph first provides a conceptual framework for organizing the methods used to study URE. Then the report provides a brief introduction to specific methods along with a few exemplar studies that highlight how each method was used to study URE. Specific methods include surveys, interviews, document analysis, observations, experiments and quasi-experiments, social network analysis, and case studies. Each methodological section provides an overview of both the utility and limitations of using the methodology to explore questions about URE. Exemplar studies come from the fields of education, health policy, and child welfare. The monograph concludes with a set of recommendations to enhance methodological approaches to URE.
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Advancing and Evaluating Impact from Public Engagement
Mark Reed (Fast Track Impact, United Kingdom)
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AESIS would like to highlight two interesting articles by Mark Reed on advancing and evaluating the impact of public engagement: The first article elaborates on how researchers can easily and effectively evaluate the impact of public engagement. Researchers can use this evaluation to demonstrate the impact of public engagement to research funders and other stakeholders. Moreover, evaluating public engagement serves to improve researchers' practice in this area, helping them to generate more impact and avoid negative consequences. The article touches upon what should be evaluated, how this can be evaluated, what sort of evidence is needed and what methods can be used to collect this evidence. Read the article here.
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In the second article, the Public Engagement Evaluation Toolkit of Queen Mary University London (QMUL) is reflected on. The toolkit provides an overview of different approaches towards the evaluation of public engagement projects and presents 21 tools that may help researchers to integrate evaluation into their activity. Read this article here.
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Indicators of museum knowledge transfer success
Josef Pinter & Christoph Köller (G&K, Germany)
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Development of an evaluation concept for knowledge transfer from research museums at the Museum of Natural Sciences Berlin
In cooperation with G&K, the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin is working on a set of indicators that will allow to assess the knowledge transfer success of a research institution.
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The ambitious project is absolutely necessary, although the number of spin-offs, license revenues, patents or similar, easily countable but often misleading impact indicators are to remain in use in the long run. The project is based on the museum’s knowledge transfer strategy and attempts to record what is desired from the point of view of the museum; on this basis, indicators are selected or developed.
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Research Assessment – to Publications and Beyond
Michael Francis (Researchfish, United Kingdom)
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National research assessments need to go beyond publications and expand to other outputs, says a recent study by the consultants RAND Europe, ‘The changing research landscape and reflections on national research assessment in the future,’ commissioned by Research England.
The study, to understand the direction of change within the research system in order to explore how national research assessments, such as the REF in the UK, may need to adapt, surveyed 3600 researchers from multiple disciplines and career stages, including nearly 600 from arts and humanities, and conducted workshops involving representative academic research bodies and organisations involved in research funding.
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The study found that researchers expect that they will produce a greater diversity of outputs over the next 5-10 years, in addition to producing journal articles. More researchers expect that there will be societal impacts from their research in the future, although the balance of types of impact is expected to remain largely the same.
These finding make tracking research and identifying pathways to impact using the Researchfish platform increasingly important as, in addition to publications, 15 common outcome types are collected, including data on further funding, international collaborations, and influence on policy. For example, an Impact Report from the Arts and Humanities Research Council showcases the impacts of research focusing on the creative economy, public policy, cultural heritage, modern languages and the media. The report also features our investments in people and skills, training the next generation of researchers. The final section of the report provides metric indicators of research outputs, collaborations, funding outcomes and studentships. Information way beyond publications!
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After a conference, course or other insightful meeting, attendees go back to their organisation with many new insights and enthusiasm. However, in between physical meetings with other impact stakeholders, the world does not stop turning. Obstacles and questions arise, best practices and knowledge too, and it would be a shame to keep these to yourself until the next impact meeting. Knowledge exchange should continue all throughout the year!
Therefore AESIS has introduced a new membership that offers additional features on top of the original free membership, of which the most important element is gaining access to our interactive online platform! This platform offers possibilities for direct contact with other experts in our network, as well as discussion fora and an online profile with room for your own publications, blogs, and other news items. Furthermore, AESIS+ members gain access to summaries and presentations of AESIS events and opportunities to continue and follow the discussions that started at our events. More details about AESIS+ Membership can be found on our website.
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Bringing the Impact of Social Science Research to the Public
Wendy A. Naus (Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA), United States)
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The Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA)—a U.S.-based science advocacy organization—has a long history of promoting contributions made by social and behavioral science research to policymakers in Washington, D.C. However, outside the D.C. bubble, there is less awareness of the role these sciences play in our everyday lives—and what we could lose if we don’t invest in research. In 2017, COSSA launched Why Social Science? to share compelling stories about the impacts of social science research with the public. The project consists of short essays that answer the titular question from a wide variety of perspectives, written not just by social scientists, but scientists from other disciplines, users of social science findings, government officials, and other stakeholders.
Over the past three years, we’ve featured contributions from Dr. Marcia McNutt, the President of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and a geoscientist (“Because We Need to Understand What Will Motivate People to Take Action”); Dr. Lee Hoffer, a medical anthropologist who studies illegal drug use and addiction (“Because It Requires Confronting the Assumptions We Have About Others”); Dr. Andrew Bernat, Executive Director of the Computing Research Association (“Because It Makes Computing Work for People”); Dr. Brandi Gilbert and Dr. Nnenia Campbell, sociologists who study the impact of natural and man-made disasters (“Because It Helps Build Resilience in the Face of Disasters”); and Dr. Olugbenga Ajilore, an economist who researches racial bias and policing (“Because It Can Challenge Conventional Wisdom”).
Help spread the word about social science impact: share these essays widely, subscribe, and consider contributing a future piece.
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Imagining Canada’s Future Initiative
Ursula Gobel (Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Canada)
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Canada’s success in the 21st century will depend on research preparedness to identify and address future societal challenges for Canada in a global context. This is the inspiration for the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Imagining Canada’s Future (ICF) initiative. ICF’s goal is to advance the contribution of the social sciences and humanities towards meeting Canada’s future, long-term societal challenges and opportunities.
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Following an extensive foresight exercise that began in 2012, six key future challenge areas (FCAs) were addressed throughout 2014-18. Mechanisms to address these future challenges included establishing partnerships and joint initiatives, targeted rapid response funding opportunities, knowledge synthesis grants (KSG), workshops, roundtable discussions and forums.
Between 2013-17 ICF engaged over 1250 participants, convened over 12 events, and established more than 40 cross-sector partnerships. Of the $3 million invested in KSGs and other activities, SSHRC was able to leverage over $430k of funding. Further, some 71% of principal investigators who have received KSG funding submitted new research proposals through SSHRC’s regular programs.
Growing interest in the ICF initiative has informed a new framework in our work that includes three pillars: foresight, research on emerging issues in the public interest and futures in research and scholarship. A recent foresight exercise undertaken in 2018 identified 16 future global challenges. Extensive engagement with leaders across academic, public, business and community sectors indicated a strong convergence of interests to address three of the key global challenges. These include Living within the Earth’s Carrying Capacity (fall 2019), Working on the Digital Economy (fall 2020), and The Emerging Asocial Society (fall 2021).
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Developing tools for co-creation of research
Karen Laing (Newcastle University, United Kingdom)
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A unique set of tools have been developed to support the co-creation of research across partnerships between universities, the third sector, business and the public sector.
A partnership in the UK between Newcastle University, Carnegie UK Trust, Newcastle City Council, Children North East, Success4All and the Federation of Small Businesses gathered evidence in order to co-produce resources for co-creating research as part of a ‘quadruple helix’ (academia, industry, government and society working together). This work built upon previous work undertaken as partners in the H2020 ACCOMPLISSH project. Two roundtable events and an online call for evidence from all sectors contributed valuable knowledge about co-creation. In all, over 70 individuals from over 60 different organisations representing all 4 sectors of the quadruple helix have contributed to the co-production of resources including a co-creation tool, videos, infographics and case studies.
The resources are aimed at those partnerships that try to span boundaries and contain members from Universities, Businesses and Industry, Local Government and policymaking organisations, and voluntary, charitable or social enterprises. A unique practical tool includes the principles of co-creation, what successful co-creation looks like and set of key questions that can be used for personal reflection and group discussions.
The resources can be found here. For further information please contact Karen Laing k.j.c.laing@newcastle.ac.uk or Ben Thurman ben@carnegieuk.org
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Mapping the Broader Impacts of the Arts
Gabriel Harp (Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities, United States)
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Arts integration improves research, promotes student success, and engages and serves the public. Research universities recognize and leverage the broader impacts of the arts through the work of higher education in five key areas: academic activities (incl. teaching, research, and engagement), student experience, student futures, the world outside the university, and with disciplines other than the arts.
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In an effort to create a broad view of this landscape, and to help research leaders locate their own work within it, the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities has created a map and instrument for further inquiry into the impacts of arts integration.
The data used to create this map are drawn from primary interviews and surveys, as well as from a secondary literature review of exemplary use-cases and scholarly sources. The map helps prompt new questions about the relationships and logic models among impacts, and it afford researchers, teachers, and leadership a more specific vocabulary and set of categories from which to ask better questions, seek out new mechanisms, and apply new frameworks and insights. The Impacts Map can be a particularly effective tool for case-making, illustrating the impacts of arts-integrative work to university administration, funders, parents, or the community. On the reverse side of the map is the worksheet used in our Impacts Workshops to facilitate this case-making. Read more here.
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Faculty publishing decisions and the RPT process
Alice Fleerackers (ScholCommLab, Canada)
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As tenured faculty positions become increasingly competitive, the pressure to publish—especially in “high impact” journals—has never been greater. As a result, many of today’s academics believe having a strong publication record is necessary for the review, promotion, and tenure (RPT) process. Publishing, for some, has become synonymous with professional success.
Yet little is known about academics’ perceptions of the RPT process and how they influence their publishing decisions. What research outputs do faculty believe are valued in RPT decisions? How do these beliefs affect where and what they publish?
To find out, we surveyed faculty of 55 academic institutions across the US and Canada, asking them about their own publishing priorities and those of their peers, as well as their perceptions importance within review, promotion, and tenure. Read our blog on what we found here.
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Integrating Impact in a Research Strategy
27-29 November - Oslo, Norway
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This course for research managers and funders offers the latest knowledge and experiences to help you apply basic principles in practice. You will have the opportunity to meet experts and peers from multiple countries who are leading innovation in research funding approaches, who will help you to be able to work more systematically to organise a research strategy that strengthens the societal impact of your research or the research programme you manage or fund.
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Generation Double-Impact" - developing impact capability in the next generations of researchers
Rikke Kristine Nielsen (Aalborg University Copenhagen)
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It is imperative to secure that STEM-sciences measures of societal impact of research are accompanied by inclusive metrics that adequately address the practical value-added of social science and humanities. A perhaps even more pressing challenge, however, is: How can we not only measure what already takes place in the present, but build (more) "double-impact" research capability going forward, i.e. develop researcher competencies for creating academic and practical value at the same time?
Working with colleagues from Aalborg University, Copenhagen Business School and University of Southern Denmark I have the pleasure and challenge of teaching a PhD course aimed specifically at developing understanding and capacity to tackle the potentials and pitfalls of creating practical impact. The course is entitled The Business of Impact, Innovation, and Co-Creation and is offered to PhD students under the Industrial PhD Program of Innovation Fund Denmark, a “double impact degree,” where traditional PhD education and degree is supplemented by additional requirements for practice impact. You can read more about the program and course here and here.
The fourth cohort of students will take the first module of the course this autumn. We have come a long way, but we still have a lot to learn. Let's talk more about training the double-impact capability of the next generation of researchers. Perhaps even more seasoned researchers could learn a thing or two in the process...
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Data Science for Zero Hunger Lab
Communications Department (Tilburg University, the Netherlands)
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Tilburg University and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs will invest 2.5 million euro’s for a period of 3 years to elevate the research to end hunger and enable Africa to feed itself. Researchers of Tilburg University have already helped to save the lives of millions from starvation through the smart application of data science. For instance by improving nutrition measures of food aid and laying more emphasis on local and regional agro and logistics.
Humanitarian workers of the UN World Food Programme in Yemen, Mozambique, Ethiopia and Iraq are already using the algorithms of Tilburg University to feed 15-20% more people affected by war or natural disaster with the same (and often limited) amount of money.
Rethink food and nutrition security world-wide
Professor Hein Fleuren of the Tilburg School of Economics and Management explains that the lab will be an open platform that will fact-track the collaboration between universities, government, ngo’s, business and local communities to rethink food and nutrition security world-wide. ‘Globally 1 billion people suffer from malnutrition, one third of the food produced gets lost or wasted and 2 billion people are overweight. It is crystal clear that the world is not feeding itself in a healthy nor sustainable way. By initiating this project we want to change the situation by enabling local farmers, communities, logistics service providers and government to fight hunger’.
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Science with a soul
The aim of building the Zero Hunger Lab to deliver innovative data science to achieve zero hunger by 2030, fits in the research vision of Tilburg Science with a Soul. It is a prime example of Tilburg’s IMPACT research programmes. The president of the Executive Board of Tilburg University, Prof. dr. Koen Becking is ambassador of the project. The project underlines the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN.
Find more information here.
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Young researchers providing reasons for hope
Dr. Roseann O’Reilly Runte (Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), Canada)
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The Amazon is burning. Microscopic particles of plastic rain upon the glaciers of the North and find their way into the food on our dinner plates. Our environment is in danger and our own survival as a species is at risk. It is not difficult to be depressed as we read the headlines in the daily news. And yet, we have many reasons for hope and many of them are found in the hearts and minds of the enthusiastic young researchers at universities and colleges around the world. Last month, at Sentinel North at Université Laval, Québec City, Canada, I witnessed first-hand their extraordinary work on documenting and analyzing climate change in the North and linking disciplines as diverse as photonics and neuroscience to respond to issues in the environment and mental health.
Down the road from Québec City, students and faculty at the university and cégep in Trois-Rivières are busy recycling, turning every ounce of waste into new, useful materials that have improved characteristics. Working with local companies, their innovative, bio-degradable products will soon appear on store shelves.
From understanding and contributing solutions to the world-wide mental health crisis to eliminating waste and disrupting the culture of disposables, these researchers provide us many reasons to hope and create for us a fine, new challenge: finding the most appropriate measures of their success!
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