Research Impact, the ‘New Academic Capital’: An Environmental Scan of Research Impact Indicators and Resources for the Humanities and Social Sciences across 32 Countries

Samantha Shewchuk,Amanda Cooper

doi:10.3844/jssp.2018.55.64

Abstract

Research impact agendas are gaining momentum globally and changing research policies from funding agencies and universities. This article reports on an environmental scan of research impact indicators and resources for Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) from 32 countries. Changing policies from national research funders include new expectations for researchers to mobilize their research to non-academic audiences that could benefit from its use and demonstrate the tangible impacts of their work. Many have argued that research impact agendas disadvantage HSS as compared to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields. As such, the purpose of this environmental scan was threefold: (a) to examine how funding agencies are defining and conceptualizing research impact and KMb in different countries, (b) to gather and analyze research impact indicators used to assess HSS and (c) to identify practical resources that might support HSS researchers with research mobilization and impact. The scan yielded 721 research impact resources relevant to HSS; included analysis of 1,105 indicators; and identified 87 resources for researchers (including tools, networks, projects and open access repositories). Supplementary files for this article include a taxonomy of research impact indicators as well as a guidebook of research impact resources for researchers.

Highlights

Global interest in the field of Knowledge Mobilization (KMb) and Knowledge Translation (KT) (Nutley et al, 2007) has grown alongside the rise of the research impact agenda
Some countries had more than one research funding agency relating to Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS), so we visited a total of 39 funding agency websites
We explored two aspects of each funding agency: (a) its mission statements in relation to KMb and impact and (b) definitions of KMb and research impact to explore how research funders were conceptualizing and operationalizing expectations of these concepts for researchers

Summary

Introduction

Global interest in the field of Knowledge Mobilization (KMb) and Knowledge Translation (KT) (Nutley et al, 2007) has grown alongside the rise of the research impact agenda. KMb is about how research finds its way (or fails to finds its way) into the hands of those in communities who could benefit from its use. Research has often failed to have the impact it might due to a lack of capacity to translate and mobilize the work to end users in non-academic settings, including policy makers, practitioners, and community members. Historical applications of evidence in countless areas of social policy have seen improved outcomes and benefits for citizens in society, such as hand-washing in health, use of seat belts in transportation, anti-smoking legislation in certain jurisdictions such as Canada, among many others (Cooper et al, 2009). It seems obvious people would agree that applications of research, when they have the potential to benefit society, should be prioritized. It seems obvious people would agree that applications of research, when they have the potential to benefit society, should be prioritized. Chandler (2014) highlighted that:

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