Between ambition and evidence

Weitkamp, Emma

Abstract

Measuring impact may be challenging, but does that mean we should accept a lack of ambition? Researchers in all fields are grappling with the challenge of how to measure impact (in many different contexts, which naturally leads to many different approaches), and so perhaps it is not surprising that the ‘impact culture’ is spreading to public engagement. But is the field rising to the challenge or should we think more broadly about how we demonstrate impact, perhaps freeing individual and smaller projects from the need to measure public impact and allowing them instead to focus on formative development? This editorial explores some of the issues in the field.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jun 11, 2015
• Deposit Date: Aug 6, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 28, 2016
• Journal: Journal of Science Communication
• Print ISSN: 1824-2049
• Publisher: Sissa Medialab
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 14
• Issue: 2
• Keywords: science communication, evaluation, REF, impact
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/832848
• Publisher URL: http://jcom.sissa.it/archive/14/02/JCOM_1402_2015_E
• Contract Date: Mar 28, 2016