The workshop held at Birkbeck, University of London on 2 December 2016 entitled ‘Measuring the Impact of Academic Research: Best Practices and Open Questions’, sought to provide an up to date assessment of recent research in the field of impact research, specifically but not exclusively on academic research, to unpack some of the issues and concepts around impact and to have an informed policy debate around such issues.
The workshop concluded by announcing the creation of a new Impact research and policy network (‘Research Impact: Developing Analytics and Policy’ (RIDAP)) the running of a quarterly workshop series and the establishment of a newsletter and social media feed for the network on this topic. It was felt that the workshop was beneficial to all types of participant and user. A key issue was trying to keep the intimacy of the high level of debate but also to incorporate a wider audience (a large number of participants had to be turned away).
Further information can be found in the RIDAP Briefing Paper #1