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This chapter describes a piece of work undertaken by the Health Impact Assessment Research Unit (HIARU) based in the Department of Public Health & Epidemiology at the University of Birmingham in England. It describes the key elements of the national policy to be assessed, outlines the various impact areas that were identified, reflects on the rationale underpinning the conduct of the assessment, and considers the implications that this had for the selection of methods for assessment and the dissemination of findings.

This chapter widens the focus of the book to explore whether there appear to be any disciplinary patterns amongst perspectives on, and experiences of, research impact in UK academia. This chapter includes an analysis of whether published perspectives on the impact agenda appear to vary by discipline (as predicted by Nowotny et al, 2001), informed by new focus group and interview data conducted for this book.

This chapter focuses on academics working in university-based groups that have been charged with, and funded to achieve, knowledge translation and research impact. These are, we suggest, academics working at the vanguard of the impact agenda, who we might consider as experimental subjects from whom we can learn. This chapter includes a summary of the types of knowledge brokerage roles and organisations that have been created in the UK and the perceived and stated rationales for these new roles and organisations, and an analysis of interview data providing insights into the perspectives of academics working within two such groups.

In this chapter we turn our attention to those charged with the task of judging the 'reach' and 'significance' of impact claimed by academic researchers in narrative case studies in REF2014. Knowledge pertaining to how the societal and economic impact of scientific research is evaluated is sparse. This is especially true in the context of the UK's national system of research assessment, the Research Excellence Framework (REF), in light of the confidentiality and rules of non-disclosure enforced by Research England and the UK Research & Innovation (previously the Higher Education Funding Council for England - HEFCE).

This chapter briefly explains what we mean by ‘the impact agenda’ and what the UK approach to research impact assessment involves. This chapter also makes the case for why an empirical investigation of the recent changes associated with research impact assessment is required and provides key definitions and an overview of the rest of the book.

This chapter takes a more historical approach, using public health as a case study to explore how views of efforts to stimulate and reward research impact have changed over time. To achieve this, the chapter compares the views of academics interviewed in 2003-2007, the run up to the RAE in 2008, just before the emergence of ‘research impact’, with the views of academics working in the same field in 2011-2015, who experienced REF2014 and the first attempt to assess impact case studies.

This chapter examines the impact of the CC programme by means of citation analysis for the period 1970-2005. Various citation measures demonstrate the enduring and extensive impact of the CC paradigm, and how its longevity has been sustained through research emulation and topic/subject diffusion. The measures also reveal aspects of the CC paradigm which have suffered diminishing impact. Furthermore, citation measures of alternative modelling routes, such as the NBER business cycle research programme, are examined to put the impact of the CC paradigm in a comparative perspective.

This chapter considers the role of knowledge mobilisation in Korea. It starts by describing the process of policy development in Korea, highlighting the contribution of the media and the general public, as well as educational researchers. It then goes on to look at the history of education policy since 1948, dividing it into four distinct phases. Next it follows three education policies from their ideas to inception to impact to show the close association of research and policy in the field of education. Then it looks at the funding of research by the government and concludes with a discussion of how to get research into schools.