Impact may account for 30% of researchers' marks in REF

Bring it on! As a reseacher whose work impacts on both policy and practice, I believe the uprating of impact is a welcome development. The trouble with Peter Main's view of whether this is desirable is that there is too much research that might be regarded as 'high quality' by insiders (i.e. technically sophisticated) and hence the RAE, but which is essentially of a navel-gazing nature. Blue skies research is important, but researchers have an obligation to justify the resources they receive.

@"The view from Wales": You might like to read the ePetition at http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/honest-discovery/ (now signed by almost seventeen hundred people) for an insight into (i) why curiosity-driven research is so much more than "navel-gazing", and (ii) why attempting to assess scientific research on the basis of economic/societal impact on a five year time scale is fundamentally flawed (from both scientific and return-on-taxpayers'-investment perspectives).

Well put Philip.

Of course one needs to understand what one means by "impact". The government sees this in short-term financial and economic terms, and so it look like HEFCE will too. But how do you rate for example Einstein's or Dirac's work in terms of impact? Or more recently Kroto's? One can find countless cases where it is "navel gazing" that has eventually produced the goods, and not so many where the pursuit of economic impact has produved anything useful.

This is terrible for the arts and humanities too. A lot of the most important research is about obscure matters of interest only to specialists, whereas there is a lot of intellectually lightweight research about subjects with wide appeal. Compare, for example, research on Anglo-Saxon literature with research into the semiotics of Eastenders - the latter is bound to score more highly for impact and could lead to a mass market publication but it will be forgotten entirely by history because its subject matter has no enduring value. The REF plans will wreck our universities and drive many good people abroad. Note that we currently have twenty or so of the world's top one hundred universities - our academic sector punches well above its weight and is incredibly successful by any measure so why the need for reform?

"A lot of the most important research is about obscure matters of interest only to specialists"... Hmm, spot the contradiction, anyone? Dude, if it really is only important to 'specialists', then at some point you lay yourself wide open to the suggestion that it really isn't important at all. If you literally cannot come up with a counter-narrative against the point, you are doomed. Studying Anglo-Saxon literature was always a luxury, why are you trying to guarantee it becomes a superfluous one?

Strange you bring in Einstein and more interestingly Dirac. The Fermi-Dirac distribution impact reverberated in particle physics resarch and more importantly in semiconductor research leading to the discovery of transistors. Your namesake Donal Glaser's work on Bubble Chamber and more recently work on "gene Silencing" had almost immedicte impact measured in pushing the frontiers of nuclear physics research and genetic research respectively. As for James Ladyman's moan, consider the situation that a few groups of viroligists have found the ways of taming Swine Flu virus mutation and are pitted against a few Ladymen who want to investigate how Romans contributed whatever in London at a particular bygone era. If I were Lord Mandelson I know what I will support. Ladyman's assertion sounds very dated and I have done work both in humanities and sciences and I find his comments cynical. These days of economic downturn with a certain size of research funding cake, I am very sure how it will divided. In that process, his comments will work against him. At one time people who thought like him closed power engineering depts in universities, cut research funding for generation and distribution of electric power in this country and we are importing power engineers in thousands every year and we depend on Germans to give us the outcome of their power research work.

"A lot of the most important research is about obscure matters of interest only to specialists" - like perhaps neurological research dealing with the toxicological effects of a particular plant-derived poisonous compound found in abundance in the wild, the buckminster-fullerine or lasers? You really need to be a bit more imaginative about what constitutes a specialist area of interest, Dave. Just because it's obscure doesn't mean it's not important. What James Ladyman says has implications far beyond Anglo-Saxon literature, and it all contributes to the sum of human knowledge, and though it may take decades, a lot of it filters down to us lowly plebs in ways hardly recognisable from the initial academic enquiry.

@James Ladyman You shot yourself in the foot. Your example of Anglo-Saxon research will not register in the radar screen of those who hold the reserach funding purse, and I suggest you move on to the contemporary matters that is meaningful which unfortunately means you need to retrain yoursel, which I am sure you would refuse and then we know....

We will all be book burning next...

So we build bigger and better technologies. Then what? A lot of the discussion on this page seems to more or less explicitly presume that the physical creation of something which did not exist previously is, in itself, an end worth pursuing. What of societal problems?

@Legal Realist "What of societal problems?". Ok, do it for your pleasure and don't expect to support the research with funds. In these areas the research is often looking at excuses.

@Legal Realist The bigger and better technologies have enabled you to comment "the physical creation of something which did not exist previously is, in itself, an end worth pursuing" in this blogosphere! That is realism!

@ Legal Realist - quite possibly, but equally, there are several commentators here who do NOT explicitly presume the physical creation of anything. Myself, Philip Moriarty, Jack Black, Mike Glazer, and James Ladyman. Everything Whippet says appears to be tongue-in-cheek, so I never can tell, but nothing in "We will all be book burning next..." suggests support for big science over pure knowledge to me! But I agree: the importance of social research is often underappreciated, especially by biomedical researchers, whose star is currently in the ascendant because their work gets quick results, it's a popular cause and it makes money. Social research is not about 'looking at excuses' as one commentator comments, but actually about looking at the nature of social reality. If you don't know how things are, then policy initiatives to tackle social problems are doomed to failure. Thus social research deserves its small share of funding as much as technology research deserves its greater share; all there is to argue about is the relative amount aportionable to each.

@Hound Dog "If you don't know how things are, then policy initiatives to tackle social problems are doomed to failure" Social scientists have written theses to explain how things are and we are none the wiser. In most of these theses one finds plethora of excuses. Most policy initiatives based on such research have had very little impact. "especially by biomedical researchers, whose star is currently in the ascendant because their work gets quick results, it's a popular cause and it makes money" Biomedical medical research should get quick research as lives are involved in its outcome. Biomedical research is not simply making money but keeping some hound dogs from getting infected with nasty mutated swine flu virus or keeping other hound dogs from losing their identity with the onset of Dementia.

@ Hound Dog - "Thus social research deserves its small share of funding as much as technology research deserves its greater share; all there is to argue about is the relative amount aportionable to each." Agreed. @ To Hound Dog - " 'If you don't know how things are, then policy initiatives to tackle social problems are doomed to failure' Social scientists have written theses to explain how things are and we are none the wiser." Surely this is an argument for the continued support of research which is not of a solely empirical nature? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the problem in the statement you quote that interpretation requires factual input, while the problem in the statement immediately following it is the lack of illumination to be gained by a pure empiricism which fails to stop and reflect? Don't these problems highlight the need for an interaction between the two broad types of research, and doesn't this broadening of horizons necessitate a certain turning away from the desire for immediate gratification?

Lots of comments. Nice to see this article has had impact. . . . Shall we now analyse its knowledge-value, using the tools we have developed in academe to extend and explore knowledge? A meteor can have impact; but its ability to do good is relatively limited.

Lerner Lone Another social scientist we suppose, interested in the sexual behaviour of Romans in Londinum in AD53? Work on Alzeimer's funded would do a lot of good for our friend Lerner Lone in the old age. Am I aLone in Learning about this truth?

To To Lerner Lone I want my research proposal linking the medieval siege warfare and the gun-toting London youth gangs to be funded .Surely this rsearch is not for "immediate gratification", and is actually looking at the social reality! Lerner Lone is not ALone!

The reality is that there will always be both goverment imposed priorities and academic cronyism in the way research is funded. I apply for, but never get funding. However, that does not stop me pursuing my research interests and disseminating this work through publication. Personally I support the the advancement of knowledge in any subject area, whether it be in Anglo-Saxon or cancer studies.

Wow. A whole 20 to 30% of reseach assessment devoted to Impact, which based on a recent discussion with business academics is proving a terribly difficult concept to define. The proportion of Impact should vary by subject area. For example in business it should be 80 to 90% on Impact - why should the taxpayer fund research in this field which is purely for the personal benefit of the researchers. In a recent seminar I discovered that the number of people reading a referreed business journal article was a maximum of 8. Business research should only be funded if there is a clear and unequivocal case that it generates value for managers.

Thank you, Jack Black! Inevitably, how research funding is prioritised is a political issue. The government is never going to be criticised for allocating more money to cancer, alzheimer's and vaccine research, because rich taxpayers are susceptible to illness just like the rest of us; but most taxpayers are indifferent to or even hostile to research into poor people's housing, inner-city crime, the effects of unemployment, care of and financial provision for the elderly, and the failures of the education system, because they don't see how it affects them. Much good may it do us all to live to be 110 in squalor, ignorance, deprivation and fear of our neighbours. By all means universities should be harnessing knowledge to find new medical treatments, but there is no necessary reason why it should be to the exclusion of social research, economics research, history, literature, etc. and research that doesn't have an obvious utilitarian payoff. As I said previously, science and technology is expensive, so it should get the lion's share of the funding, but it doesn't follow that this research is important because we can see the benefits of it, but that research isn't because we can't.

This idea that research should only be funded if it provides immediate value for money for the taxpayer is rather simplistic. There is a wider cultural dimension here. There is real danger in becoming ever focused on ' in vogue' areas of research at the expense of a more balanced funding approach.

Keeps it interesting, all this. Apparently this is called "debate" and apparently such debate happens in something called "a university" and apparently it adds to our understanding of the world, as well as ourselves. Define "impact" narrowly and we might as well wave such debate and, indeed, exploration of understanding, goodbye. Then we can simply reduce knowledge development to a raw metric. Neat. Detached. And without human worth. I'm all for that, as long as we can invest in the space programme first and I can move "off site" somewhere. Apollo 11 astronauts, 40 years on, suggest we should go to Mars next - not as machines, but as humans, and for human reasons. Yes, interesting all this is . . . .

Lerner Lone I am not an academic. You claim that debate happening in the university adds to the understanding of the world. How come you are so ignorant of our world not the academic's deluded world. For example, in our world jobs in thousands are lost and in the academic's world mostly esoteric discussion and 8% pay rise demands. Apollo 11 astronauts went to moon as humans in case you have forgotten. Comng back to our real world, we would rather welcome the work which stops this dreadful flu virus mutating and killing thousands more in our country than a work which delves into Anglo-Saxon's sleeping habits in centuries ago. Scientific work is directed at humans living TODAY. If some technology work would help to improve the effciency of alternative sources of energy, it helps human too. You argument suggests me that you should come out of wherever you are living and see how we in the real world live and breath.

There are different needs and audiences to which the ubniversity must responbd. Narrowly defined economic needs certainly meet one set of needs to one type of audience. There are also othe members of the public whose neds are more metaphysical than economic. Both groups contribute to the common purse called public resources and are equally deserving of the benefits they need. The prevailing realities of the national good will influence thye degree of influence but certainly may to disregard the metapysical for the physical.

@Jason. You should reread lerner lones post.

It does appear that the new framework will lead to a lot more activity designed to meet impact criteria rather than achieve scientific excellence. The biggest problem is the time scale. Consider the story of green fluorescent protein (GFP). If Shimomura had had to demonstrate the "impact" of extracting glowing proteins from jellyfish in the sixties, I doubt he would have satisfied funding agencies. Yet when, almost three decades later, Doug Prasher published the sequence of the GFP gene, it lead to a revolution that would go on to impact cell biology, drug development, stem cell research, diagnostics, cancer research, studies of animal physiology and heart disease. And lead to a Nobel Prize in 2008 for Shimomura, Chalfie and Tsien. Clearly, expecting a typical 3-year research project to have a transformative impact on society within a 5-year time scale suggests that "shortermism" has found its way into science policy in the UK. A short account of the discovery and exploitation of GFP can be found at http://www.conncoll.edu/ccacad/zimmer/GFP-ww/history.html

Kehinde Ross GFP usage is common in UG science labs. Not a new story. When the research budget is tighter choices are made. That simple.

The idea that research in the social sciences and humanities contributes nothing of practical benefit is common amongst a certain breed of scientist, but it is false. For example: In 1996, Gerry Mackie wrote a paper drawing parallels between the old practice of footbinding in China and the practice of female circumcision in parts of Africa, and suggesting how lessons learned from the campaign against the former might be used in ending the latter. Within a year, an organisation called Tostan had turned that into a concrete programme that has in the past decade led to the practice being abandoned in one-third of Senegal's territory, and the idea is spreading. A clear benefit to humanity, no? But Mackie's work would have been impossible without the decades of ethnographic literature on the historical practice of footbinding in China on which he could draw - which is exactly the sort of research that the more acerbic commentators here would condemn as useless navel gazing. Is contributing to ending female circumcision really worth less than helping Alzheimer's sufferers be less dependant on others? This type of result is not at all atypical for the social sciences, but you simply will not see it within a five-or ten-year time-frame.

Quite so, Arvind. However, the accountants would probably say helping Alzheimer's sufferers be less dependent on others has obvious economic benefits, but ending female circumcision doesn't.

Why can't Arvind and Hound Dog and the ilk find academic post in Senegal where they would have a better chance of helping to end female circumcision. Given the overseas budget reported increase by 12% they will have a greater chance of securing funds for studying and publishing on female circumcision, and leave scientists in this country to concentrate on Alzeimers.

@Charlie: you are sounding foolish now...

Assessing 'impact' demands a time scale. If this latest splutter on the topic is anything like the execrable 'Impact Factor' (sic) widely used on scientific publications, it will actually be an index of the ephemeral. It's all about 'blip' rather than REAL impact. Take the case of meat physiology, biochemistry and genetics where research virtually ceased in the UK under Mrs Thatcher's '80s version of this 'assessment' credo. Meat Research Institutes were closed etc., small fry like prion research was deemed impact-free in ... and then ... BSE! Others? Retroviruses and AIDS... the list goes on. The hard-to-define, messy, but entirely plausible multiple indices of 'quality' that academia traditionally uses remains a far, far better bet. (All assessment is, after all, really is just another bet. Talking of betting; why are ANY academic, commercial or industrial economists still in post after the credit crunch? Now that was real impact.)