Editorial

 

Why we need smaller impacts that nobody can prove

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As we grow increasingly obsessed with measuring our most significant and far-reaching impacts, we are inadvertently being encouraged to stop pursuing a range of other, equally important, impacts. Nobody would ever suggest we should we stop doing research that holds governments to account, or not bother engaging with the public. Yet there is evidence from one discipline that research that went against prevailing government ideologies was less likely to do well in the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (covered in our last issue), and calls to make it easier to claim impacts from public engagement in REF2021 were largely ignored. In my recent article with Dr Jenn Chubb from the University of Sheffield (discussed in this issue), we described this phenomenon as extrinsic motivations “crowding out” intrinsic motivations for impact, but Dr Gemma Derrick (also in this issue) labels it, far more bluntly, as “grimpact”.

 

In an attempt to counter a prevailing culture that increasingly pushes people towards investing in and valuing only the most significant and far-reaching impacts, we decided to create a prize to celebrate “unsung impacts”. The entries, which you can read about in this issue, showed some of the key reasons why impacts are not being considered for submission to REF2021. For example, they may have too limited reach, they may be impossible to measure or prove, or entirely valid impacts may have been undermined by the fact that the research had been conducted at the wrong university. Unless we find ways of celebrating and inspiring others to pursue unsung impacts, we may see fewer and fewer people pursuing impacts like these. Many of the impacts you will read about in this issue are not just the right thing to do, they are deeply inspiring and motivational.