Measuring Research Impact

The Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) recognizes the need to improve the ways in which researchers and the outputs of scholarly research are evaluated. The idea to write the declaration was developed in 2012 during at the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in San Francisco. It has become a worldwide initiative covering all scholarly disciplines and all key stakeholders including funders, publishers, professional societies, institutions, and researchers.

Use these ten principles to guide research evaluation, urge Diana Hicks, Paul Wouters and colleagues.

In 2023, the British Academy, in association with the Academy of Social Sciences, commissioned a team of researchers at the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science (University of Oxford) to carry out a piece of research that would explore research impact for the SHAPE disciplines (Social Sciences, Humanities and the Arts for People and the Economy), looking at the body of impact case studies submitted to the most recent research assessment exercise in the UK (REF2021).

Explore the stories, successes and societal benefits of UK research in SHAPE disciplines: Social Sciences, Humanities and the Arts for People and the Economy. Provides access to the Impact Case Studies submitted to the United Kingdom's Research Excellence Framework of 2021.

A Canadian network of universities, colleges, and scholarly associations. Provides a collection of resources for assessing research impact in humanities and social sciences.

2017 report from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Provides a set of recommendations.

A YouTube recording of the Round Table at John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University (2023)

Pedersen, D. B., Grønvad, J. F., & Hvidtfeldt, R. (2020). Methods for mapping the impact of social sciences and humanities—A literature review. Research Evaluation, 29(1), 4–21.

2010. Provides a framework of academic, policy, practice, and wider societal and economic impacts.

An initiative that provides values-enacted frameworks for understanding and evaluating all aspects of the scholarship in humanities and social sciences.