As part of the REF readiness exercise in preparation for our REF submission in 2020, the Impact, Engagement and Environment Coordinator, in conjunction with the School Impact Coordinators, is holding a series of ‘Impact Case Study Action Plan’ meetings with identified case study leads.
Initial meetings have already started to take place and will continue throughout September and October. These will be followed up by mid-point review and year-end review meetings.
The aim of these meetings is to set a number of SMART objectives to guide our case study leads through the development of their case studies across the next two years in preparation for the final REF submission.
Key areas of focus include:
- Creation of an ‘impact’ folder within Figshare in order to deposit all impact evidence collected to date and to maintain on an ongoing basis
- Identification of research outputs to be included as ‘underpinning research’ for the impacts claimed in the case study
- Completion of a stakeholder analysis to identify who has benefitted so far from the research, who to contact for testimonials, who to target to generate future impact and so on
- Redrafting of impact case study information to date to reflect development of objectives and to shape the final submission
Further details on what constitutes an impact and how to measure ‘reach and significance’ of the impact have been released by REF in their draft panel guidance.
These details can be found here: https://www.ref.ac.uk/publications/
This list is not exhaustive, but provides a useful overview of the many different ways that research can generate an impact of some kind. Some food for thought!
Peer review of impact case studies
It is anticipated that both formal and informal internal peer reviews of impact case studies will be held in late 2018/early 2019, with another external peer review planned for Summer 2019.
Development of impact case studies through adherence to the ‘Impact Case Study Action Plan’ should help our case study leads to submit further drafts of their impact case studies for peer review to enable meaningful feedback to be provided and fed into future iterations of the action plan.
Why not take this opportunity to check out this and other impact resources available on the REF staff intranet: https://www.salford.ac.uk/ref