The information below will help you work out how to evidence your impact.

Why evidence impact?

There are many reasons to gather evidence of research impact. You might need to report back to your funder on your project’s progress, including progress towards your impact goals. Or perhaps you want to write an Impact Case Study to showcase your impact on your School website.

Considering impact early in the project will ensure that you have plenty of time to collect the right evidence as your research progresses.

What to evidence?

Ultimately, to tell a convincing impact story, you need to collect evidence of three things:

1. Reach – how widespread the impact is. In other words, how many beneficiaries there are. Are the impacts at a local, regional, national or international level?
2. Significance – how important or valuable the impact is for each beneficiary.
3. Attribution – showing how your research actually contributed to the impact.

This might include records of meetings with policymakers, links to media appearances, attendance figures at events inspired by your research, testimonials from beneficiaries, data on the uptake of your tool or device, etc.

How much evidence should you gather?

Enough to convince people – your funder, case study reader, promotions panel – that your research had the impact you claim.

Examples of impacts and evidence

The UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) sets out the different categories of research impact in this useful document. This includes examples of impacts under the different impact areas, along with indicators of reach and significant.

In 2017, Campus Engage published a sectoral report on Engaged Research for Societal Impact. This includes a Societal Impact Framework with impact categories and performance indicators, based on a synthesis of existing categories and indicators used across Ireland and Europe. You can also explore some examples of impact evidence and metrics offered by Campus Engage.

Your researcher profile

Work is currently underway to upgrade our research information system. Once this work is completed, it is important that you regularly update your new online profile to record evidence of your research impact. Comprehensive training will be provided when the system rolls out to help you in doing this. In the meantime, please continue maintaining your IRIS profile.

Benefits of updating your researcher profile:

• Makes potential collaborators, students and general viewers aware of your research and teaching activities.
• Increases the chance of new contacts for research collaboration, including internal University partnerships, national partnerships and international partnerships.
• Showcases your career achievements, including awards/prizes, membership of Committees, media appearances.
• Ensures that as much research activity as possible is counted in University research assessments.
• Increases the chance of your publications getting cited, shows your current name, affiliation and attributes your work to you.

Research Skills Training Programme

Each year, UCC Research organises a suit of training workshops that are delivered to the research community online on Microsoft Teams. These sessions cover a wide range of topics including those relevant to research impact. Details of the workshop schedule are circulated to all researchers via email throughout the year.

University of Galway – Research Impact Series

University of Galway has developed a helpful series of nine videos that discuss different aspects of research impact. The video series can be accessed here. These videos were created by Saskia Walcott (Walcott Communications), an impact consultant based in the UK.