Short Abstract

This session aims to present and discuss how to make societal impact research evaluation frameworks and initiatives more effective and customised, while accounting for contextual differences across countries in the Global North and the Global South.

Description

The impact of research conducted in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) on society has been a topic of intense debate in different countries. On the one hand, we have the growing demand to demonstrate the value of research funded with public resources; on the other hand, there is an urgency to better inform the policies and actions that will guide the research produced by HEIs worldwide.

One of the driving factors for the increased interest in the subject was the inclusion of societal impact as an evaluation criterion in national performance-based research funding systems (PBRFs). The most well-known of these initiatives is the UK's Research Excellence Framework (REF), which was one of the first PBRFs to include societal impact as a category for evaluating HEIs. The evaluation of the societal impact of research is also a criterion used in other research evaluation systems, such as the SEP in the Netherlands, and, in Brazil, for the evaluation of postgraduate programs by CAPES.

Most of the definitions and models developed to assess the impact of HEI research on society are built on the reality of countries in the Global North, with some exceptions, such as the RQ+ model of the International Development Research Centre, although the model's focus is centered on the research project level and not the institution. In Latin America, there is a recent movement led by CLACSO, the Latin American Forum on Scientific Evaluation, to improve how science is evaluated in the region and to move beyond the use of indicators and models created in the Global North.

While scientific communities are increasingly interested in improving their evaluation processes, with a focus on the impacts of research across various spheres of society, there remains little clarity about possible models for assessing this type of impact taking context into account. As most evaluation models are built on the realities of countries in the Global North, there may be a conflict or inconsistency when research aims to generalise its findings, given that contextual and cultural specificities are highly relevant. Hence, it's essential that research evaluation models from these countries be adapted for use in countries in the Global South.

While scientific communities are increasingly interested in improving their evaluation processes, there remains little clarity about how to create and implement models that genuinely take context into account. The dominance of evaluation models built on the realities of the Global North creates a clear conflict when applied to the Global South, with its contextual, cultural, and economic specificities. This panel discussion will move beyond stating the need for adaptation to discuss the practical challenges and opportunities involved. We will explore critical questions: How can we develop robust, context-sensitive frameworks without simply 'localising' Northern models? What practical steps can institutions and funders in the Global South take to champion evaluation criteria that reflect their own societal priorities? And how can we foster a global evaluation culture that values diverse pathways to impact?