A new resource for identifying and assessing the impacts of research.

Saba Hinrichs,Jonathan Grant

doi:10.1186/s12916-015-0364-x

Abstract

/SummaryThe impact case studies submitted by UK Higher Education Institutions to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) in 2014 provide a rich resource of text describing impact beyond academia and across all disciplines. Using text mining techniques and qualitative assessment, the 6,679 non-redacted case studies submitted were analysed and the impact described was found to be multidisciplinary, multi-impactful, and multinational. By digging deeper into the data, the health gains from health research in terms of Quality Adjusted Life Years was also estimated. Similar analyses are possible using these case studies, but will require the data to be ‘re-purposed’ from the original intention (i.e., for assessment purposes) for robust analysis.

Highlights

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is a new system for assessing the quality of research in UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)
HEIs are assessed on three criteria: outputs, e.g., publications, non-academic impact in the form of a set of impact case studies (20 %), and research environment (15 %)
The allocation of research funding based on nonacademic impact is relatively new, with the REF being the first example of its application across a research system [1]

Summary

Introduction

Introduction The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is a new system for assessing the quality of research in UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). In the UK, following a pilot exercise [3], the higher education funding bodies concluded that peer review of research impact case studies was a workable approach and it was decided that REF will assess universities on the basis of the quality of research

Results

Conclusion