The Research Excellence Framework is primarily a mechanism for assessing the quality of research and allocating research funding. However, REF outputs and in particularly impact case studies hold value for many actors outside of higher education institutions.

Podcast: Research managers, citizen scientists, librarians and technicians rarely make it onto author lists. But an initiative to assess their hidden contributions to team science moved some judging panel members to tears.

Imagine if nonprofit leaders, philanthropists, and policy makers no longer had to guess what works but could predict success with scientific certainty. Enter the field of impact science.

The challenge of demonstrating the value of the humanities can never be fully accomplished by showing that the humanities serve other disciplines. 

This post draws on a recent analysis of different impact evaluation tools to explore how they constitute and direct conceptions of research impact. 

It is good that the authors of HEPI’s report ‘Regional Policy and R&D’ note that the UK, by most agreed measures, is significantly unbalanced economically (in terms of income, productivity and economic growth).