In their bid to secure funding under the terms of the Research Excellence Framework, academics are drafting in writers and consultants to make them and their work more accessible
Mrs Peabody was never expected to play such a key role in Swansea University’s languages department, especially as she is imaginary.
Invented by Katharina Hall, associate professor of German at the university, as an alter ego to explore crime fiction through blogging, she has helped garner her author more than 200,000 hits on the blog and two appearances on Radio 4 with broadcaster Mark Lawson, as well as giving her a platform to discuss primary texts used in her research and allowing wider access to her findings.
This has all proved invaluable for Hall in preparing a case study to prove the impact of her work for the Research Excellence Framework (REF), a process of assessing research to help determine the size of the research grant each university receives.
“A media profile helps,” says Hall. “I started off with the blog, then made contacts and met a BBC producer at a crime convention. That definitely helped in terms of impact. The programmes went out just before the Archers.”
The REF, which closes for submissions at the end of the month, is the successor to the Research Assessment Exercise last carried out five years ago, but it puts more emphasis – 20% – on impact, in other words, proving that work has made a difference to real people, not just avid readers of journals.
What effect, if any, this is likely to have on the type of research universities do and how their academics go about it will become clear only once the results are published at the end of next year and universities discover what sorts of impacts score highly. But already supporters are hailing it as radically changing researchers’ understanding of the need to make their work accessible, while critics say it is pushing higher education further towards what is of commercial rather than scientific value.
Hall started her mrspeabodyinvestigates blog as a hobby but argues that making research more accessible to the public also helps to enrich it, by bringing in new voices. Her department is already thinking about potential impact case studies for the next REF, likely to be in another five years’ time.
But Philip Moriarty, professor of physics at Nottingham University, argues that impact is often less about what is for the public good than about what is good for industrial companies. While he supports public engagement, he says the impact criteria are likely to direct departments towards short-term, neo-market work. “It’s dramatically changing the culture of research in universities,” he says. “You almost have to be embarrassed to do fundamental science that you cannot write an impact statement about.”
Ben Martin, professor of science and technology policy studies at the University of Sussex, says that while he agrees that if you get money from the taxpayer, the taxpayer should expect something in return, “the process of getting to grips with something as slippery as impact is flawed”.
He also has reservations about the case studies academics need to prepare for the REF, arguing that most research findings only bring about change as part of hundreds of interactions working together. “The whole thing is an exercise in writing convincing fairy stories when, in fact, it’s far more complicated,” he says.
One result of all this has been to create an industry of specialist writers and consultants dedicated to helping academics with the story-telling process.
Exeter University advertised recently for an impact manager to start planning for the next REF, likely to take place in 2020. Michael Wykes, Exeter’s policy, impact and performance manager, says: “A case study approach may favour those born with a silver tongue or who can afford to pay consultants to help. The REF panels will be alert to this and want to hear the academic voice first and foremost. Nevertheless, universities are using all available resources to make sure they do as well as they can.” He argues that it is also about supporting academics. “All academics want their research to make a difference.”
Martin Stott, chief executive of Bulletin Public Relations, says his company has helped about 15 institutions to put together impact case studies for the REF. “We can’t expect our brightest academics to be natural communicators, though many are,” he says. “It makes sense to provide specialist communication support to them.”
Saskia Walcott, an impact consultant in higher education and former head of communications at the Economic and Social Research Council, says she has helped academics give their accounts a clear, concise, narrative style, as well as meet the criteria of the REF impact guidelines. What many struggle with, she says, is supplying evidence for the claims of impact they make. “The question I would be asked is if you have fantastic impact but no evidence, what do you do? Unfortunately, you have to go with the impact you can evidence – but that might not be so amazing.”
What really makes a difference in terms of developing a convincing impact story, she says, is good networking. She predicts that more academics will want to build a strong personal profile in future. This has taken off recently with the growth of social media. Blogging, Twitter and LinkedIn allow academics to connect with people as never before and present themselves as public figures, not just professors.
So much pressure is there now on academics to develop a strong brand that while universities in the UK have been paying consultants to tidy up their impact case studies, in the US some faculty pay public relations firms to tidy up their social media profiles, including creating Wikipedia pages.
But Paul Manners, director of the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement, warns that the value of a high media profile should be put in perspective. “Being able to build your brand and become better known and better connected is really important,” he says. “But if that’s all you do, you risk pissing off all sorts of people you are trying to work with.”
He says academics should build their brands within their research groups, and think about maximising the networks of the whole departmental team. While a few high-profile academics appearing on television or at a top table in Whitehall can provide inspiration, “if you fetishise a handful of celebrities you miss the fact that higher education is really engaged in multiple conversations”.
Capturing these conversations in a coherent way for an impact case study can be hard. David Wield, professor of innovation and development at the Open University, was one of half a dozen people working on a case study about regulatory systems in the life sciences, which, he says, took two person-months. “It’s not straightforward,” he says. “But it’s useful. Reading what we’ve done, seeing it written tidily on one page – we have never done that before.”
via Education: Research | theguardian.com http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/nov/12/research-excellence-framework-impact-consultants
