Social Science Space

Promoting public engagement with research has become a core mission for research funders. However, the extent to which researchers can assess the impact of this engagement is often under-analysed and limited to success stories. Drawing on the example of development aid, Marco J Haenssgen argues we need to widen the parameters for assessing public engagement and begin to develop a skills base for the external evaluation of public engagement work.

Twitter and other social media platforms represent a large and largely untapped resource for social data and evidence. In this post, Wasim Ahmed updates his recurring series on the Impact Blog, to bring you the latest developments in digital methods and methodologies for researching Twitter and other social media platforms.

In this post, Lutz Bornmann and Robin Haunschild present evidence from their recent study examining the relationship of peer review, altmetrics, and bibliometric analyses with societal and academic impact. Drawing on evidence from REF2014 submissions, they argue altmetrics may provide evidence for wider non-academic debates, but correlate poorly with peer review assessments of societal impact.

The active use of metrics in everyday research activities suggests academics have accepted them as standards of evaluation. Yet when asked, many academics profess concern about the limitations of evaluative metrics and the extent of their use. Why is there such a discrepancy between principle and practices?

A vital part of any research assessment program is the ability to clearly demonstrate the impacts, whatever they may, of the research undertaken. In this post, Katy McEwan presents the impact chain approach for writing impact case studies. A method, which provides a framework for producing impact narratives

Sascha Friesike, Benedikt Fecher and Gert. G. Wagner outline three systemic shifts in scholarly communication that render traditional measures of impact outdated and call for a renewed debate on how we understand and measure research impact.

LSE takes us through a round-up of all their top articles relating to Research and Policy connectivity. Explore a variety of 2018 articles on engagement, policy making, and collaboration.

We need to bridge the gap between academic research and public policy. Sarah Quarmby takes a look inside a knowledge brokering organization, the Wales Centre for Public Policy, to see how its day-to-day workings tally with the body of knowledge about evidence use in policymaking.

The appeal of collaborating with a government agency, or an organization funded by one, seems obvious. In practice, however, it’s not always easy to make collaborative research work well. Susan Dodsworth and Nic Cheeseman outline some simple lessons for those looking to collaborate while avoiding the common pitfalls.

The success of academic research in reaching out beyond its own scientific community is a perennial concern, even more so following the rapid adoption of social media and the ability to easily transmit information to potentially millions of people. But is increased social media attention really indicative of “broader impact”? A new study suggests social media does not broaden scientific communication, but rather replicates and perpetuates pre-established disciplinary boundaries. 

Portia Roelofs and Max Gallien cite Bruce Gilley’s defense of colonialism paper published earlier this month to illustrate how deliberately provocative articles have the capacity to hack academia, to privilege clicks and attention over rigor in research.

The new Open Writing project aims to open academic writing practice to reflections and experiments with the actual process of writing, with a view to creating new, open research products that have an impact on peers, public and policymakers.