Research Impacts Beyond the Citations
By Dr Debbie Pu
‘Publish or perish’ has become a well-known adage in academia, especially for early career researchers who are trying to ‘make it’ in an increasingly competitive research landscape. Describing your research impact as a scientist is usually a vital section of fellowship applications, but how do you quantify/qualify your research impacts when you’re barely a few years out of your PhD and haven’t published 1 gazillion papers in Nature that were cited by Marie Curie herself?
Check first, what does the funding agency recognise as research impact? Both the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) have defined research impact within the contexts of research that they fund.
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The ARC, which funds all STEM research that is not medical, names 5 impact pathways for you to match your achievements to: 1) Inputs (e.g. research income, staff), 2) Activities (e.g. organising workshops and conferences, professional organisation membership), 3) Outputs (yes, papers, but also reports and briefings and media articles), 4) Outcomes (yes, citations, but also commercial products or start-ups, evidence of policy integration), and 5) Benefits (e.g. economic, social, cultural, environmental…).
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The NHMRC, which funds clinical and medical research, recognises 4 types of research impact: 1) Knowledge (what are the benefits from the new knowledge your research generated?), 2) Health (straight forward: how has your research improved health?), 3) Economic (does your research create jobs, save costs), and 4) Social (does your research improve the health of society as a whole?).
I’ve found that while we build our research profiles and wait for downstream impacts (like citations, which take time) to realise themselves, all or most of us have probably already done loads of things that would fall into one of the impacts categories but may not be immediately obvious. For me, I had engaged in a lot of “Activities” type impact that would be recognised by the ARC:
- I am a member of 2 professional associations (Speech Pathology Australia and AAG) and a partner of 1 research group. I review grant applications for all 3 and am organising a conference for 1. List all of your professional and association memberships – you contribute to the field by being a member who contributes financially to the field and participate in association activities like workshops, conferences, and applying to awards like the Helen Barrie National Prize or any of the 3 annual AAG grants. [Pssst, keeping an on eye on emails from AAG will also clue you in to opportunities like this one to contribute to national guidelines.]
- I have run consultation workshops with older adults from the community and various health care professionals to inform research priorities in our field. Does your work involve co-design or some sort of input from community stakeholders who are not academics? Be specific about how you engaged them and the value of their input, simply stating that “older adult participants completed a survey about X” is not enough.
- I’ve written multiple posts for AAG’s SECG blog and one for Voice Australia. Other examples of forums for science writing include The Conversation and STAT (they pay you!), follow the links to see how you can pitch an idea for a piece. The AAG SECG blog is an open forum for all student and early career members, and the 500 blog accepts submissions from all members, so why not use this platform to showcase yourself and your research! Reach out to [email protected] for the SECG blog and [email protected] for the 500 blog.
- I cold-emailed a bunch of people I’d met once before and asked them if they wanted to do a study with me out of their already busy schedules. They agreed, and after SO MUCH paperwork we have completed the study and the results have been accepted to a conference. Have you reached out to fellow junior researchers who are just as poorly funded as you to do “hand shake” projects that could lead to collaborations down the track? If not, consider it. You can even start your own research group and give it a cheesy acronym (e.g. Speech Pathology Researchers International Networking Group – SPRING – did I write this whole blog post to showcase this acronym? Maybe.)
Ultimately, there will always be someone who has published more than you, being cited more than you, presented at more conferences than you. So look back at the path you have walked so far and find those little ‘impact pebbles’ that you can use to continue to pave your academic journey.