Framework billed as addressing “growing demand” to demonstrate the benefits of R&D investments
A new framework for evaluating the societal impact of research will aim to capture the immediate and long-term benefits of outputs and recognise the varied nature of the ways in which research benefits society.
In a report published on 25 September, Clarivate* said the framework, developed by its Institute for Scientific Information, would address a “growing demand” for demonstrating the benefits of R&D investments across various sectors of society.
The framework, to be incorporated on the company’s forthcoming Web of Science Research Intelligence platform, aims to balance qualitative and quantitative approaches, and take account of the “long timeframes between research discovery to societal application”.
Dual indicators
“To mitigate the challenge of lengthy delays between research being conducted and any resultant societal benefits, the evaluation framework contains both lagging and leading indicators,” Clarivate said.
“Lagging indicators offer retrospective insights by analysing past outputs and activities, while leading indicators are forward-looking and analyse recent signals that suggest the potential to generate future societal benefits.”
‘Increasing pressure’
Emmanuel Thiveaud, senior vice-president, research and analytics, academia and government at Clarivate, said that as global R&D spending continues to rise, funders, governments and institutions “face increasing pressure to ensure that their investments provide measurable benefits in areas such as health, climate change and technological advancement”.
“This new framework developed by the Institute for Scientific Information provides the tools necessary to meet this demand, allowing users to focus on specific research areas most relevant to their organisation’s mission and long-term objectives,” he added.
The framework contains a range of metrics, allowing for what Clarivate calls a “detailed and customisable evaluation”. The overall societal impact will be presented on Web of Science, with the underlying individual metrics also available to “support transparency and more granular analyses”.
‘Comprehensive approach’
Dmytro Filchenko, senior director, research and analytics at the Institute for Scientific Information said: “Our framework leverages our extensive resources of enriched data which goes beyond scholarly output and extends to our data on patents, clinical trials, policy documents, media publications, data sets, educational outputs, funding data and much more, as well as external data sources where necessary.
“This comprehensive approach ensures a nuanced and accurate assessment of societal impact across various domains.”
*Research Professional News is an editorially independent part of Clarivate
The post Clarivate framework aims to evaluate R&D societal impact appeared first on Research Professional News.