Section 2: How does societal impact differ across disciplines?

How does societal impact differ across disciplines?

Introduction

It’s clear from both our quantitative research with 9,000 researchers and our qualitative interviews with academics in the Netherlands that both the importance and interpretation of societal impact varies significantly by discipline.

In our interviews, researchers appear to agree on what societal impact means – maximising how the results of your research are used to benefit society. However, depending on the discipline, the routes to achieving that and the intended audiences were viewed differently.

Researchers in social and political sciences, as well as medicine and health, talked extensively about the impact of research on patients, communities or the public at large. As well as the influence research can have with policymakers and politicians.

Researchers in STEM subjects also talked about communicating with the public to explain their research, but in addition discussed how their research could be applied with the help of investment – for example, through a startup company.

The benefits of interdisciplinary research were also deemed important to the societal impact research could have. With some researchers we spoke to emphasising the need to communicate about research across academic disciplines, as well as outside academia.

Research insights

We conducted a survey with over 9,000 researchers to understand how societal impact is viewed by academics across different countries, disciplines and career stages. This is what we found…There were statistically significant differences by discipline when it came to views of the importance of societal impact:

Societal impact of research is seen as most important in Social Sciences and Medicine – 77% and 73% respectively said ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ important compared to the mean of 68%

Societal impact is viewed as least important in Physics/Chemistry and Engineering – 54% and 64% respectively said ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ important compared to the mean of 68%.

When it comes to funding, requirements placed on researchers to demonstrate societal impact also vary by discipline:

Earth & Environmental Scientists and Biologists were more likely to be asked by funders to consider potential societal impact ‘always’ or ‘most of the time’ – 50% and 49% respectively compared to the mean of 47%

Researchers in Medical disciplines were more likely to never be asked by funders to consider potential societal impact – 15% compared to the mean of 12%

When asked about whether societal impact should be tied to funding, 36% of those from Medicine stated a belief that societal impact of research is important or should be the main goal of research (compared with 25% of respondents from Biology, 26% from Engineering and 21% from Physics/Chemistry/Material Sciences).

Intended research impact varied significantly by discipline:

Interview insights from academics based in the Netherlands

We carried out a series of interviews with researchers from a variety of disciplines who have made a societal impact with their research.

Unsurprisingly, the ways in which they’ve made an impact and how they talk about what impact means both varied by discipline…

I'm a very big fan of participatory research. It’s all about getting to grips with and truly understanding the lives of the people you’re studying – and taking into account their preferences, needs and wishes. I believe this leads to better quality, more impactful research because it helps us to understand the problems that really need solving.

Professor Mai Chin A Paw, university research chair professor at VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam.

Read the interview.

There’s a lot of personal satisfaction that comes with founding a successful business and bringing something you’ve created to society. People around the world are using the technology that I invented. There are 60 people in jobs because we founded this company. It’s very fulfilling to know that you’ve enabled that – that you’ve had that impact.

Professor Davide Iannuzzi, university research chair professor in experimental physics at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

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To serve society through science, through academia, directly – by assisting clients, by talking to victims, by answering questions, by explaining to large audiences through the media. That's sensational to be able to do that with your brain and your time.

Dr Marieke de Hoon, assistant professor of international law, international criminal justice and human rights at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Read the interview.

The importance of cross-disciplinary work was also highlighted by some of the researchers we spoke to…

There are so many open questions about applying AI technologies that it begs the question, ‘How do we create AI systems that, from the start, are intended to be used in society?’ And, therefore, we need to bring together the right stakeholders – the legal scholars, the ethicists, the IT people, the data scientists, and so on, to really understand the problem we want to solve and make sure that it's feasible from day one rather than day 1,000. your quote here…

Michel Dumontier, distinguished professor of data science at Maastricht University.

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My task, as director of the Amsterdam Sustainability Institute, is to tell around 300 researchers at our university, who work on sustainability topics, that they should work together across disciplines. I think to have the most impact we need to overcome silos and boundaries that we have in the disciplines. We need to work in a way that reflects the world we live in.

Professor Philipp Pattberg, director of the Amsterdam Sustainability Institute (ASI)

Read the interview.