Wróblewska, M.N., Balaban, C., Derrick, G., Benneworth, P. (2023) The conflict of impact for early career researchers planning for a future in the academy, Research Evaluation, rvad024, https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvad024
Abstract
It has been argued that due to the growing importance attributed to research impact and forms of its evaluation, an academic ‘culture of impact’ is emerging. It would include certain concepts, values, and skills related to the area of generating and documenting impact. We use thematic and discourse analysis to analyse open answers from 100 questionnaires on research impact submitted by ECRs working in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in Europe. We explore ECR’s early-career stage positions relative to societal impact and the trade-offs necessary to assure an academic career. The results show how, as the first generation of scholars to be socialized towards value of academic research beyond academia, ECRs are confronted with policy signals that encourage a drive for impact, which are at the same time often in line with respondents’ personal values around impact beyond academia. However, ECRs face a number of competing signals about research value within the evaluation spaces necessary to navigate an academic career. Current evaluative structures often dismiss the achievement of societal impact favouring instead narrower definitions of research excellence. Career structures and organizational realities are often unfavourable to impact-related activity, which has implications for an ECRs’ ability to develop coherent professional positionings.
This article takes an empirical approach to something we all acknowledge and talk about but the authors collected the evidence to establish that early career researchers (ECRs) actually struggle with impact of research because it is not recognized in traditional processes of career recognition and advancement. I could leave it there but….
The context for the research is the conflicting messages that academic researchers get from institutions and public policy drivers creating expectations of societal impacts of research but these expectations are in conflict with traditional methods for researcher assessment which privileges traditional scholarly outputs “with publications and grants in particular being associated with academic excellence” and not engagement and impact. The authors recognize that the number of hours dedicated to professional activities is a zero-sum game. “In this zero-sum game for individual ECRs, time and effort spent on one activity (in this case: public engagement/impact), inevitably drains away time allocated to the other (in this case: obtaining traditional measures of academic esteem).” While traditional scholarly outputs are not incompatible with engagement and impact – in fact one can argue that you need expertise as developed through the former to enable the latter – the time spent on one takes away from the time spent on the other.
While ECRs rely on guidance and mentoring from senior faculty, these senior faculty achieved their career recognition on elements that did not include engagement and impact. Impact has been part of the academic discourse in the UK since about 2009 when UKRI began consulting on the 2014 Research Excellence Framework and in Canada since 2000 when CIHR introduced a knowledge translation mandate and 2010 when SSHRC introduced a knowledge mobilization mandate. Nonetheless ECR find it challenging to get guidance and mentorship because “there is still widespread general confusion and mistrust around impact as a concept even amongst more senior academics.”
The authors constructed a survey based on a 2018 workshop for European social science and humanities researchers. They received 111 responses from 30 countries and analyzed them using discourse analysis.
There was a commitment to impact but also tensions about pursuing impact.
Commitment to impact:
- A desire to create positive change
- A commitment primarily as the duty to contribute to maintaining a healthy democracy
- Responsibility to give back to society through public accountability
- A belief that impact is an integral, not separate, part of society
Career tensions
- Time for impact (see zero-sum game above)
- Impact being viewed as extra academic work
- Academic publications seen to be a priority over impact
- Insecurity related to their junior status (which I would guess is felt in all aspects of ECR life, not just impact)
There is an important, although brief, discussion about impact becoming institutionalized. “Institutionalizing impact for ECRs and their careers requires not just delivering training as part of their development, but also providing ECRs the space and long term support necessary to track, collect, engage, and transform on their research findings to evolve into evidence and become useful beyond academia.”
And thankfully the authors don’t leave it there. They conclude with some things that institutions can do. “There is a need to create supportive academic environments, where the pursuit of
extra-academic impact is presented as an integral part of researchers’ professional ethos and not as an optional avenue that presents more risks to an ECR’s career than it does opportunities. Formally including extra-academic impact in recruitment and promotion criteria (as is relevant for each country context) as well as championing positive examples of scholars who have had success with extra academic impact, would aid the incorporation of impact into broader constructions of research excellence.”
Questions for brokers:
- If you are an ECR does this resonate? If you’re not an ECR find one and ask them how they feel about impact as part of their career identity.
- Impact has been part of the academic discourse for over 20 years in some settings. Why then is there general confusion and mistrust around impact among senior academics? Or do you disagree with this statement?
- The authors end with what should happen to institutionalize impact. What are the barriers and enablers of institutional change?
Research Impact Canada is producing this journal club series to make evidence on knowledge mobilization more accessible to knowledge brokers and to facilitate discussion about research on knowledge mobilization. It is designed for knowledge brokers and other parties interested in knowledge mobilization.