Abstract
Since the Research Excellence Framework of 2014 (REF2014) ‘impact’ has created a conceptual conundrum gradually being pieced together by academics across the Higher Education sector. Emerging narratives and counter-narratives focus upon its role in dictating institutional reputation and funding to universities. However, not only does literature exploring impact, rather than ‘REF2014 impact’ per se, seldom see it as part of a changing sector, but it often also treats it as a new phenomenon within the political and social sciences. Here, we draw upon academic perceptions of impact set in motion in the UK during the 1970s, we critique the underlying assumption that impact is new. We argue three key points to this end. Firstly, contrary to much of the literature examining academic perceptions of impact, it is a long-standing idea. Secondly, within such accounts, the effect of academic research on policy and society (which is long-standing) and the instrumentalisation of impact as a funding requirement (which is relatively new) are conflated. Thirdly, this conflation creates a novelty effect. In the context of a wider sea change to Higher Education, we examine different forms of consent, acceptance, endorsement and resistance surrounding the ‘new’ impact agenda to argue that this ‘novelty effect’ masks an important transitory process of acclimatisation among academics.
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Notes
Grant’s review of 6,679 impact case studies submitted to the REF2014 (from 149 fields of research) estimated that there are 3709 ‘unique pathways to impact’. Within this deluge, ‘informing government policy’ and ‘parliamentary scrutiny’ were the most common types of impact for Panel C (social sciences) (2015, p. 56).
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The authors acknowledge with gratitude that this research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. The research was also supported by the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods. Many thanks are also due to Professor Ian Rees Jones and Professor Sally Power.
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Pearce, S., Evans, D. The rise of impact in academia: repackaging a long-standing idea. Br Polit 13, 348–360 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-018-0079-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-018-0079-7