Front Cover -- The Impact Agenda: Controversies, Consequences and Challenges -- Copyright information -- Table of contents -- List of figures, tables and boxes -- List of abbreviations -- Notes on authors -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Introduction: critical reflections on research impact -- Overview of the rest of the book -- Data sources employed in the book and authorship of chapters -- Note -- 2 The rise of research impact -- The emergence of research impact as an idea -- Defining research impact -- Situating research impact internationally -- Tracing the emergence of research impact as an idea in the UK -- Notes -- 3 Debating the UK impact agenda -- Introduction: key concerns with, and critiques of, the UK's impact agenda -- Concern 1: the theoretical challenge to research impact -- Concern 2: the problems with demonstrating and attributing 'impact' -- Concern 3: the difficulty of meaningfully measuring research impact -- Concern 4: the potential to encourage and reward 'symbolic' research use or 'performative impact' -- Concern 5: impact as a challenge to the autonomy of academia -- Concern 6: the assumption that research impact is necessarily 'positive' -- Concern 7: overloading policy audiences and/or confusing 'more research use' with 'better research use' -- Concern 8: unnecessary exclusion of impact examples via the application of an arbitrary time limit -- Concern 9: the resources required to achieve, demonstrate and assess research impact -- Concern 10: reifying 'impact heroes' and traditional elites -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 4 Do experiences and perceptions of research impact vary by discipline? -- Research impact across disciplines -- 'Genuine impact' versus 'REF impact' -- Creating narratives of impact -- The complexity and collective nature of research impacts -- Conceptual versus instrumental impacts -- Impact targets audiences.

Industry and technology -- Policy -- Publics -- Practice -- Targets, impacts and REF panel preferences -- 'Easy' and 'difficult' impacts -- Linking research to impact -- The consequences of the impact agenda for academic practices -- Increased engagement and collaborative work -- Co-production as a restriction on critical scholarship -- Research impact as a restriction on academic freedom and autonomy -- Research impact and academic careers -- The impact agenda and research quality -- Research impact shaping research projects -- Conclusions -- Notes -- 5 Impact on whom? Contrasting research impact with public engagement -- Definitions: the relationship between impact and public engagement -- Rationalising public engagement -- Safer bets? A perceived preference for policy and commercial impacts -- Contrasting public engagement with other forms of research impact -- Disciplinary differences in focus on public engagement -- Conclusions -- Notes -- 6 Public intellectualism and the impact agenda: international perspectives -- Which public and what intellectual? -- Multiple publics and multiple knowledge -- What does successful impact involve and what motivates efforts to engage external audiences? -- Is there a 'public role' for engaged scholarship? -- Community connections -- Double binds and drawbacks: perspectives on the UK's research impact agenda -- Conclusions -- Note -- 7 Academic life in the impact vanguard: the view from knowledge exchange organisations -- Who are the knowledge brokers? -- Knowledge brokers and research funding in the UK -- The impact agenda as an enabler of knowledge exchange -- Building expertise in knowledge brokering -- 'Spaces for impact' and scaling up knowledge translation -- 'A move towards a good direction': changing the organisational and resource environment for knowledge brokering.

The impact agenda as a challenge to knowledge exchange -- Constructing contradictory incentives -- An evidence-based impact agenda? -- Type of evidence -- Institutional set-up of impact -- Definition of impact -- Understanding of knowledge translation -- Conclusions -- Notes -- 8 Looking back: evolving public health perspectives on research impact -- Existing policy recommendations for improving the use of public health evidence in policy -- Preliminary public health perceptions of the UK's impact agenda: from scepticism to celebration and concern -- Public health academics' responses to the UK's impact agenda: three clusters -- Cluster 1: enthusiastic supporters -- Cluster 2: creative adapters -- Cluster 3: pragmatic accommodators -- Conclusions: public health support for research impact (with reservations) -- 9 Telling tales of impact: as seen through the eyes of user assessors -- Telling (one-sided) tales -- Further concern 1: REF constructs a distinction between expert academics and passive beneficiaries -- Further concern 2: the non-portability of research impact for REF restricts academic freedom -- Further concern 3: REF impact requirements inform two distinct categories of academics - excellent and impactful -- Further concern 4: the high monetary value associated with REF impact case studies has a potentially distortive effect -- Drawing value from tales told -- Conclusions -- Note -- 10 Conclusion: what would an evidence-informed impact agenda involve? -- Summing up our findings -- What might an alternative, evidence-informed approach to research impact involve? -- References -- Index -- Back Cover.

Measuring research impact and engagement is a much debated topic in the UK and internationally. This book is the first to provide a critical review of the research impact agenda, situating it within international efforts to improve research utilisation.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2025. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.

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