Thatâs a great question! I donât have any good answer, but Iâve looked online and found some interesting papers so Iâll just post some stuff Iâve got so far.
It seems like there is recently a shift toward âsocietal-impact focused researchâ, as opposed to âquality-focusedâ, driven mostly by the need to calculate Return On Investment. I think that this biases the current metrics/âevaluators to be more short-termed and focused on health/âsecurity/âtech-innovations.
Here, the authors ask research evaluators how they think about assessing societal impact. They have identified 5 dimension -
1. The Importance of the Underpinning Research in Evaluating Impact.
For more quality-focused evaluators, the importance of underpinning research when evaluating impact was driven by an underlying value system depicting a strong link between scientific and societal impact.
2. The Value of the Impact Versus the Value of the âRightâ Impact.
For some evaluators, the necessity for research of a high quality to underpin societal impact was guided by the assumption that impact referred to âgood impactâ, as opposed to ânegativeâ societal impact.
3. Impact as Linear, Controllable or Serendipitous
A major underpinning factor influencing evaluatorsâ opinions was related to whether to view impact as related to âoutside factorsâ separate to the research, or something that was viewed rationally, therefore related to the quality of the research.
Towards the quality-focused extreme, evaluators envisaged a âpipelineâ from high quality research to societal impact â âa sort of translational pipeline is the okay term that tends to get used for taking a scientific discovery and pushing it towards some sort of laboratory test, new drug, or whatever, which, I guess, many people would view as some sort of impactâ(P1OutImp5). Thus, the relationship between scientific and societal impact hinged upon the idea that âimpact requires that you generate the evidence and then that you, in turn you get into guidelines and the people start using that information to change their practiceâ
4. Push Factors and Assessing Impact
Towards the quality-focused evaluator extreme, the assessment of societal impact was influenced by a belief that a researcherâs role in ensuring societal impact was limited solely to providing high quality research, whereas it was the responsibility of other, non-researchers to use this as evidence to pursue societal impact.
5. Measurable Impact Outcomes Versus Unmeasurable Impact Journeys
The final factor which influenced the evaluation scale was whether evaluators valued societal impact as a single, measureable outcome, or as a process or journey that, in many cases, is impossible to be measured.
Thatâs a great question! I donât have any good answer, but Iâve looked online and found some interesting papers so Iâll just post some stuff Iâve got so far.
It seems like there is recently a shift toward âsocietal-impact focused researchâ, as opposed to âquality-focusedâ, driven mostly by the need to calculate Return On Investment. I think that this biases the current metrics/âevaluators to be more short-termed and focused on health/âsecurity/âtech-innovations.
Here, the authors ask research evaluators how they think about assessing societal impact. They have identified 5 dimension -
1. The Importance of the Underpinning Research in Evaluating Impact.
2. The Value of the Impact Versus the Value of the âRightâ Impact.
3. Impact as Linear, Controllable or Serendipitous
4. Push Factors and Assessing Impact
5. Measurable Impact Outcomes Versus Unmeasurable Impact Journeys
seems relevant, and I want to look into more deeplyâBack to Basics: Basic Research Spillovers, Innovation Policy and Growth
Nice find! This seems like a useful step, though of course likely considerably different than what I imagine consequentialists would aim for.