Research Impact in Society, Advancing. 2025. Mapping Institutional Pathways for Advancing Research Impacts. Oregon State University. https://doi.org/10.5399/osu/1187
Abstract
Higher education institutions are expanding collaborations with industry, other institutions, and communities to enhance the societal impact of research. However, significant opportunities remain to scale and sustain publicly engaged research initiatives. This report synthesizes insights from seven nationally relevant reports, including Modernizing Scholarship for the Public Good, Public Impact Research, multiple National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine reports, the PTIE Findings Report, and The Evolution of Broader Impacts. A comparative analysis identified five key themes: Institutional Leadership and Infrastructure, Faculty Advancement and Reward Systems, Measuring and Demonstrating Impact, Funding and Sustainability, and Community Partnerships and Engagement. Our analysis suggests that without strong leadership, adequate resources, and policy reforms, efforts to integrate research impact into higher education will remain fragmented. Universities must adopt coordinated strategies that align institutional missions with public engagement, support faculty, secure funding, and build lasting community partnerships to ensure research remains academically rigorous and socially impactful.
This is a report that synthesizes and summarizes key learnings from seven national reports on various aspects of societal impacts of research. The report is authored by staff associated with Advancing Research Impact in Society (ARIS), a national US network seeking to build individual and institutional capacity for research impact. One of the seven is a report from ARIS. The synthesis identified “five interconnected themes: (a)Institutional Leadership and Infrastructure, (b) Faculty Advancement and Reward Systems, (c) Measuring and Demonstrating Impact, (d) Funding and Sustainability, and (e) Community Partnerships and Engagement.”
That these themes are interconnected is important. It means that every time you create an intervention in one theme you need to monitor the others to ensure that benefits accrue to more than one theme. You can get more bang for your intervention buck.
I am not going to dig into each of these as the technical report does that. But I will draw a few thoughts together.
Leadership is associated with the right policies…but they don’t sit on their own. Any impact strategy needs to at least reference or hopefully integrate with strategies on research and innovation, community engagement, EDI including decolonizing and tenure/promotion – possibly others such as expense reimbursement to pay for community expenses and reimburse community expenses in a way that doesn’t require them to list as a vendor or provide a social insurance number for honorarium.
Under “Faculty Advancement and Reward Systems” the report points to the “absence of standardized metrics for assessing societal impact as a key limitation.” I do not question that we need to develop standards of excellence by which research impacts can be assessed but I suggest these will not be standard. We do not assess research excellence in English by the same criteria as for Physics so why should assessment of research impact be standardized? Principles can be standardized across the board but not specific indicators. In my opinion.
Check out the new narrative CVs being adopted by Canadian research funders. These allow researchers to speak about the impacts of their research not only on scholarly metrics but by creating narratives of impacts on community, on professional practice, on EDI and decolonization, on industry, on standards/policies/regulations etc. The narrative CV is a standard document with a ton of flexibility to be adapted to impacts of research in English and in Physics.
Finally on the final element, Community Partnerships and Engagement, the article states “without embedded infrastructures that respond to stakeholder priorities and expectations, universities risk engaging in one-off collaborations that lack sustainability and fail to produce lasting societal benefits.” The former CEO of United Way of York Region (a community organization) used to say that we should have no drive by partnering. We should seek institution-institution partnerships that will transcend individual researcher-agency collaboration. This can be facilitated by institutional infrastructures to house these on going and sustainable relationships.
Questions for brokers
- Rank these five themes in order of importance. Do you think your ranking applies to institutions other than your own?
- What would be some principles for assessment of research impact that might map across disciplines?
- Narrative CVs (this might resonate best for Canadians): just another change management exercise or something that can support broader societal impacts of research?
Research Impact Canada is producing this journal club series to make evidence on KMb more accessible to knowledge brokers and to create online discussion about research on knowledge mobilization. It is designed for knowledge brokers and other people interested in knowledge mobilization. Read this open access article. Then come back to this post and join the journal club by posting your comments on our LinkedIn.