Reporting KT activities in the academic CV: How can we show the impact of our research?

Written by Julia Levin

 

Researchers are being asked more and more to demonstrate the impact of their work. If you are a researcher who has been able to show the real-life application of your research, how do you show for it on your curriculum vitae (CV)? Members of the Integrated Knowledge Translation Research Network (IKTRN) addressed this question in a new study that investigated how health researchers report research knowledge translation (KT) activities and impact in their academic CV.

In an interview conducted by IKTRN, Terry Campbell, Executive Director of Research Management Services at the University of Ottawa, discussed some of her thoughts on this paper and her experiences with researchers reporting their KT work in their academic CV.

One of the article’s main findings was that “participants perceived employers do not value research translation and impact activities.” Campbell noted that this was not surprising to her as few universities consider this work when they evaluate performance. She stated that she has not seen many great examples of researchers reporting research translation activities and impact on their CV. Campbell discussed the benefit of being part of the RIC network, where members share the KT and mobilization activities that are being done at their institutions. She discussed the report that was done a few years ago on engaged scholarship. The report discussed what universities across Canada are doing and how engaged scholarship has been integrated into the evaluation processes of universities. What it found is that there is not much formal recognition in that area. While universities are starting to do things to recognize knowledge mobilization work, there is a lot more they can still do.

Campbell ended off the interview with pointing out one of the main concerns she has with the current system. “I think one of the main issues with knowledge translation and mobilization is we don’t have the same standardized metrics that we have for academic publications, citations, etc. Because we don’t have these metrics right now, we have no standardized collection of this type of information and so it is not readily available to evaluate people. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have it. If you start thinking about what you need to be capturing and how to capture it, then you can start collecting it as an institution and highlight it. So where do you start? If you start from a researcher having the confidence to reflect it in their CV, then it is a great idea.”

To read the full interview with Terry Campbell, click here.

 

 

To read the original article, see

*Boland L, Brosseau L, Caspar S, Graham ID, Hutchinson AM, Kothari A, McNamara K, McInnes E, Angel M, Stacey D. Reporting health research translation and impact in the curriculum vitae: a survey. Implement Sci Commun 1, 20 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s43058-020-00021-9