Making an

Impact

Making an Impact

Impact will form a key element in the REF submission criteria.

Impact can be having an effect on, benefiting, or making a change to the economy, public policy or services society, culture, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia.

In the REF 2014 case studies (6,637 case studies), the impact type Societal was the highest impact type with 26%.

REF 2014 Impact Type

Political

Legal

Health

13%

16%

Cultural

Technological

21%

Societal

26%

Economic

Environmental

impact review

Impact Overview

The REF impact review reports provide an overview of impact activity by Unit of Assessment for the REF 2014 exercise. The reports provide a breakdown of impact type by UoA as well as a detailed review of the sources used to corroborate impact.

These sources used to corroborate impact vary across each Unit of Assessment and may include for example such corroborating sources as testimonials, factual statements, sales, clinical trials, reports, licences, guides, presentations, and documents etc.

The reports also provide a review of the research topics featured in each Unit of Assessment, and for most of the units, it has been possible to group these topics together by recurring sectors or areas. Each report includes:

Impact type breakdown by UoA
Summary statistics of sources used to corroborate impact
Detailed analysis of sources used to corroborate impact
Research areas/topics in each UoA
Number of case studies by UoA
Comparison of case study numbers across all units

Examples of REF Impact Review report sections

The example pages provided above are for representation purposes only, and do not reflect any particular institution or real data, figures used are for illustrative purposes only.

Data sources for above data include: http://results.ref.ac.uk, http://results.ref.ac.uk/Results/SelectUoa, http://impact.ref.ac.uk/CaseStudies/Results.aspx?val=Show%20All, http://www.hefce.ac.uk/funding/annallocns/1516/research/ qr1516 spreadsheet. https://www.ref.ac.uk/2014/

Any views or opinions expressed in this website or review reports are that of DC Data Consultants only, and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other organisations, institution, or company. These review reports and example sections above are copyrighted by DC Data Consultants.