Organiser(s)

Rob Procter, Alex Voss and Peter Halfpenny, National Centre for e-Social Science, University of Manchester

Description of workshop

The main objective of this workshop is to bring together members of the e-Research, innovation studies and science policy communities to explore the challenge of measuring the impact of research innovations and its implications for science policy.

Researchers from a range of disciplines have accumulated a stock of knowledge that can be brought to bear on this challenge and we invite contributions that will help to operationalise this knowledge.

The workshop will consist of a small number of invited talks, presentations and a discussion session.

Call for papers

As e-Research technologies and methods mature, we need to consider how they become a core part of scientific practice if they are to fulfil their potential. In order to achieve this aim, we need to understand the mechanisms which influence adoption and appropriation. We also need to be able to gather reliable evidence of uptake, measure impact on research practice and wider society, evaluate programmes intended to facilitate research innovation and create an evidence-base for future science policy-making.

Evaluating the impact of research is difficult. New findings and methods take time to enter the public domain and their significance may only become clear much later. This limits the capacity of metrics, such as citations, to document scientific impact within relatively short timescales. Similarly, evaluating wider impact of research programmes on, for example, industry, the economy and competitiveness is fraught with difficulties. There are also fundamental questions that need to be addressed concerning what kinds of impact should be included.

Comparisons of different science policies and national contexts can help understand more about the interplay between different factors in the research innovation process and thus increase the capacity to shape the future direction of e-Research investments and ways to make e Research sustainable in the long term.

We invite contributions on the following topics:

• Mapping e-Research: projects, disciplines, structure, processes, outputs
• Case studies of impact
• Types of impact and their metrics
• Data collection, including qualitative and quantitative
• Data analysis, including impact models, methodologies and tools
• Theories and models of innovation
• Science policy evaluation
• Lessons from international comparisons and past innovation programmes