Has the Impact Agenda Changed the Culture of UK Universities?

William Gibson wrote that “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” This is certainly true of the future envisaged by the architects of the impact agenda. While impact has now become firmly established in the lexicon of UK academia, the extent of the culture change within universities in terms of supporting and promoting impact varies greatly from institution to institution.

The formal assessment of research impact in REF 2014 was intended to spur universities into taking the non-academic impact of their research more seriously: to put greater effort into knowledge transfer, engagement with external partners, and influencing society and the community through their research. The short-term effect was a combination of hostility and panic: hostility, because many academics feared they were being pushed towards commercializing their research or objected to the sentimentalization of their work, and panic, because universities had to come up with case studies in a short period of time and had not been gathering evidence of impact as it occurred because there had been no requirement to do so.

For REF 2021, the impact case study approach has been retained. However, the institutional context is quite different. Universities have known about the requirement for impact case studies from the very beginning of the REF cycle. They have had time to plan strategically how to achieve impact and how to support impact-related activities. They have had the opportunity to hire staff and put into place support structures and funding streams for impact. Academics have had time to become familiar with the concept of impact and build it into their research project planning. Everyone is aware of the need to gather robust evidence of impact as it occurs and support impact case studies.

Last year I published a white paper, “The Evolution of Impact Support in UK Universities,” which examined whether the culture change that the impact agenda was supposed to usher in has in fact materialized. So far, it appears that this has been partially successful, with the establishment of impact support within university professional services.

In general, there has been a trajectory from ad hoc impact support with no specialist posts, to (usually) a single impact officer, to a full structure of impact support. Although simplistic, one significant point does arise from this model: the first transition, from ad hoc support to an impact officer, is driven from the top down, as senior management recognize the need for dedicated impact support, particularly in the context of improving their university’s REF submission. The second transition, on the other hand, is driven from the bottom up, as the single impact officer appreciates and articulates the need for a more comprehensive and integrated approach to research impact. Conferences and workshops play a crucial role here, in establishing the shared understanding of impact within a community of impact professionals. The willingness of academic leadership to consider seriously the concerns and informed perspectives of professional support staff is a major factor in whether a university makes that second transition.

There has also been a real shift in academic culture as a result of the impact agenda and the efforts by impact support staff to achieve institutional success in terms of that agenda. This culture change is not uniform – some academics still misunderstand impact, some are apathetic to it, a few are hostile, but across institutions, the bulk of academic researchers are now engaging with research impact in a way that they did not back in the days of REF 2014. This is not to say their reasons and motivations are uniform: some are motivated by public good, some by enhancing their research, some by career incentives, but nonetheless the cultural shift is real. However, it is difficult for many academics to find sufficient time to pursue the impact of their research, given their other teaching and research commitments.

In addition to hiring staff and making use of internal resources, universities can also buy in impact support from the commercial sector. A clear message for anyone providing support to universities for impact activities is that this support should engage as deeply as possible with the research, should as far as possible be embedded in the research project, and should ensure that it enhances the substance of the research impact and of the evidence of its reach and significance.

The need for evidence and evaluation support remains a real gap in provision in most institutions. This kind of work is both time-consuming and specialized, particularly when it comes to impact arising from less easily measured routes such as public engagement. This is an area where higher education lags behind other sectors, in particular local government and the charity sector, where rigorous evaluation is commonplace. Whether universities seek to develop internal specialist support in this area or whether they contract this expertise as needed, there is a clear message that more needs to be done to collect evidence and evaluate impact.

Fundamentally, the willingness of senior leadership to invest in impact and to see it as an integral part of research is the key factor in the level of impact support in universities. Certainly, comprehensive impact support requires investment, and that must be justified. However, given the many millions of pounds of research funding that are dependent upon achieving a strong impact performance in the REF, not to mention the many wider benefits of impact to researchers themselves as well as the wider world, it may seem surprising that greater priority is not given by some universities to providing stronger support for impact. The results of REF 2021 may provide them with additional incentive.

This article is a part of Blank:a Vol. 6 Making Research Impact Exciting: What Universities Can Learn from REF 2014.