ArticlePloS one2016
Beyond Academia - Interrogating Research Impact in the Research Excellence Framework.
Article in PloS one, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 20 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed.
- The National Health and Medical Research Council Research Impact Indicators: Unveiling Omissions and Blind Spots, and Positioning for Change.Health promotion journal of Australia : official journal of Australian Association of Health Promotion Professionals · 2026Article
- Getting It Out There: Reflections on the Process and Impact of Public Engagement Activities in a Study on End-of-Life Care Planning With People With Intellectual Disabilities.Health expectations : an international journal of public participation in health care and health policy · 2026Article
- Article
- Estimating scientific coherence using population-level indicators and research production data: a longitudinal analytical proof-of-concept study.Frontiers in research metrics and analytics · 2026Article
- Identifying stakeholder preferences for communicating impact from medical research: a mixed methods study.BMC health services research · 2024Article
- Rethinking our future: Describing and enhancing the impacts of dissemination and implementation science for cancer prevention and control.Journal of clinical and translational science · 2024Article
- The post-award effort of managing and reporting on funded research: a scoping review.F1000Research · 2023Article
- Exploring the application of machine learning to expert evaluation of research impact.PloS one · 2023Article
- Article
- Increased use of knowledge translation strategies is associated with greater research impact on public health policy and practice: an analysis of trials of nutrition, physical activity, sexual health, tobacco, alcohol and substance use interventions.Health research policy and systems · 2022Article
- Effective engagement and involvement with community stakeholders in the co-production of global health research.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2021Article
- Progress Towards Using Linked Population-Based Data For Geohealth Research: Comparisons Of Aotearoa New Zealand And The United Kingdom.Applied spatial analysis and policy · 2021Article
- Societal impact of research: a text mining study of impact types.Scientometrics · 2021Article
- Evidencing the impact of cancer trials: insights from the 2014 UK Research Excellence Framework.Trials · 2020Article
- Implementing and assessing a service to demonstrate public impact of faculty research in news and policy sources.Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA · 2019Article
- Science to the rescue or contingent progress? Comparing 10 years of public, expert and policy discourses on new and emerging science and technology in the United Kingdom.Public understanding of science (Bristol, England) · 2018Article
- Analysis of the distribution and scholarly output from National Institute of Academic Anaesthesia (NIAA) research grants.Anaesthesia · 2018Article
- Assessing scientists for hiring, promotion, and tenure.PLoS biology · 2018Article
- Do altmetrics correlate with the quality of papers? A large-scale empirical study based on F1000Prime data.PloS one · 2018Article
- Correction: Beyond Academia - Interrogating Research Impact in the Research Excellence Framework.PloS oneArticle
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Big changes to the way in which research funding is allocated to UK universities were brought about in the Research Excellence Framework (REF), overseen by the Higher Education Funding Council, England. Replacing the earlier Research Assessment Exercise, the purpose of the REF was to assess the quality and reach of research in UK universities-and allocate funding accordingly. For the first time, this included an assessment of research 'impact', accounting for 20% of the funding allocation. In this article we use a text mining technique to investigate the interpretations of impact put forward via impact case studies in the REF process. We find that institutions have developed a diverse interpretation of impact, ranging from commercial applications to public and cultural engagement activities. These interpretations of impact vary from discipline to discipline and between institutions, with more broad-based institutions depicting a greater variety of impacts. Comparing the interpretations with the score given by REF, we found no evidence of one particular interpretation being more highly rewarded than another. Importantly, we also found a positive correlation between impact score and [overall research] quality score, suggesting that impact is not being achieved at the expense of research excellence.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.