(25 Sep 2024) Clarivate Plc, a leading global provider of transformative intelligence, today announced the development of a comprehensive framework for evaluating the societal impact of research. The approach has been outlined in a new report published today by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)™ to address the growing demand for demonstrating the benefits of research and development (R&D) investments across various sectors of society.
The report, A responsible framework for evaluating the societal impact of research, outlines a responsible and robust foundation for evaluation that goes beyond traditional scholarly output and includes a wide range of data sources. The new framework will be incorporated into the forthcoming Web of Science Research Intelligence™ platform.
The framework developed by Clarivate addresses core challenges in evaluating societal impact:
- Recognizing the varied and complex needs of society: To address the diversity of societal needs, the framework categorizes societal needs into eight facets: Political & Policy, Legal & Governance, Economic, Human Capital, Medical, Social & Cultural, Technological and Environmental.
- Balancing qualitative and quantitative approaches: The framework will extend beyond traditional quantitative indicators to enable richer and more nuanced qualitative assessments.
- Navigating the long timeframes between research discovery to societal application: 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. Lagging indicators offer retrospective insights by analyzing past outputs and activities, while leading indicators are forward-looking and analyze recent signals that suggest the potential to generate future societal benefits.
The press release in full is here.
