MAXIMIZING THE IMPACTS OF YOUR RESEARCH: A HANDBOOK FOR SOCIAL SCIENTISTS LSE Public Policy Group Consultation Draft 3: Please give us your feedback and comments to [email protected] MAXIMIZING THE IMPACTS OF YOUR RESEARCH: A HANDBOOK FOR SOCIAL SCIENTISTS About this Handbook There are few academics who are interested in doing research that simply has no influence on anyone else in academia or outside. Some perhaps will be content to produce ‘shelf-bending’ work that goes into a library (included in a published journal or book), and then over the next decades ever-so-slightly bends the shelf it sits on. But we believe that they are in a small minority . The whole point of social science research is to achieve academic impact by advancing your discipline, and (where possible) by having some positive influence also on external audiences - in business, government, the media, civil society or public debate. For the past year a team of academics based at the London School of Economics, the University of Leeds and Imperial College London have been working on the Impact of Social Sciences project aimed at developing precise methods for measuring and evaluating the impact of research in the public sphere. We believe our data will be of interest to all UK universities to better capture and track the impacts of their social science research and applications work. Part of our task is to develop guidance for colleagues interested in this field. In the past, there has been no one source of systematic advice on how to maximize the academic impacts of your research in terms of citations and other measures of influence. And almost no sources at all have helped researchers to achieve greater visibility and impacts with audiences outside the university. Instead researchers have had to rely on informal knowledge and picking up random hints and tips here and there from colleagues, and from their own personal experience. This Handbook remedies this key gap and, we hope, will help researchers achieving a more professional and focused approach to their research from the outset. It provides a large menu of sound and evidence-based advice and guidance on how to ensure that your work achieves its maximum visibility and influence with both academic and external audiences. As with any menu, readers need to pick and choose the elements that are relevant for them. We provide detailed information on what constitutes good practice in expanding the impact of social science research. We also survey a wide range of new developments, new tools and new techniques that can help make sense of a rapidly changing field. This Handbook will be of immediate practical value for academics, lead researchers, research staff, academic mentors, research lab leaders, chairs and research directors of academic departments, and administrative staff assisting researchers or faculty team leaders in their work. 2 Contents Executive Summary ...........................................................................................................5 Introduction What are research impacts?.............................................................. 10 Summary .............................................................................................................21 PART A MAXIMIZING THE ACADEMIC IMPACTS OF RESEARCH....................... 22 Chapter 1 What shapes the citing of academic publications?.......................... 23 1.1 Variations in citations rates across disciplines ..............................................24 1.2 Academic careers and the accumulation of citations ....................................28 1.3 Career trajectories and the development of capabilities and publications .34 Summary .............................................................................................................53 Chapter 2 Knowing your strengths: using citation tracking systems ........... 54 2.1 How distinctive is your author name? ............................................................55 2.2 Orthodox citation-tracking systems ...............................................................56 2.3 Internet-based citation-tracking systems ......................................................65 2.4 Comparing conventional and internet citations tracking systems ..............72 Summary .............................................................................................................78 Chapter 3 Key measures of academic influence ................................................... 79 3.1 Assessing how well an author is cited ............................................................79 3.2 Assessing how far journals and books are cited ............................................89 3.3 Who cites a little or a lot: Hub and authority patterns .................................93 Summary .............................................................................................................96 Chapter 4 Getting better cited..................................................................................... 97 4.1 Writing informative titles, abstracts and book blurbs ..................................98 4.2 The issues around self-citation .....................................................................109 4.3 Working with co-authors and research teams ............................................113 Summary ...........................................................................................................120 PART B MAXIMIZING RESEARCH IMPACTS BEYOND THE ACADEMY ..........121 Chapter 5 The origins and patterning of external research impacts ..........123 5.1 Types of scholarship within disciplines and external impacts ...................125 5.2 The role of joined-up scholarship .................................................................138 5.3 Understanding the impacts interface ...........................................................149 5.4 How far do academics and researchers undertake activities likely to generate external impacts? ..................................................................................157 Summary ...........................................................................................................165 Chapter 6 Is there an impacts gap from academic work to external impacts? How might it have arisen? How might it be reduced? ......................................166 6.1 Demand and supply mismatches ..................................................................167 6.2 Insufficient incentives problems ...................................................................173 6.3 Poor mutual understanding and communication .......................................176 6.4 Cultural mismatch problems .........................................................................178 3 6.5 Weak social networks and social capital ......................................................180 Summary ...........................................................................................................184 Chapter 7 Understanding how researchers achieve external impacts.......185 7.1 Theoretical discussion ...................................................................................186 7.2 Empirical evidence .........................................................................................201 7.3 Credit claiming for research ..........................................................................207 Summary ...........................................................................................................211 Chapter 8 Understanding, tracking and comparing external impacts for organizations ..................................................................................................................212 8.1 External impacts are rooted in collective ‘tacit knowledge’ .......................213 8.2 The time lags in achieving impacts ...............................................................217 8.3 Generating an evidence base about external impacts .................................223 8.4 Comparing organizations’ and disciplines’ performance ...........................234 8.5 Managing impacts work – potential pitfalls .................................................241 Summary ...........................................................................................................245 Chapter 9 Expanding external research impacts ...............................................246 9.1 Developing an impacts file for individual academics ..................................248 9.2 Reappraising events programmes ................................................................253 9.3 Building improved management of ‘customer relationships’ ....................258 9. 4 Moving some version of all closed-web published research onto the open- web ........................................................................................................................266 9.5 Improving professional communication: starting multi-author blogs ......269 9.6 Working better in networks ..........................................................................278 Summary ...........................................................................................................280 Methodological Annex: the PPG dataset................................................................281 Bibliography....................................................................................................................285 4 Executive Summary Defining research impacts 1. A research impact is a recorded or otherwise auditable