{"id":260046,"date":"2024-04-15T07:01:38","date_gmt":"2024-04-15T06:01:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/?p=260046"},"modified":"2025-10-07T15:06:58","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T15:06:58","slug":"demonstrating-socioeconomic-impact-a-historical-perspective-of-ancient-wisdom-and-modern-challenges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/academia-government\/blog\/demonstrating-socioeconomic-impact-a-historical-perspective-of-ancient-wisdom-and-modern-challenges\/","title":{"rendered":"Demonstrating socioeconomic impact – a historical perspective of ancient wisdom and modern challenges"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dive into the historical evolution and contemporary challenges of assessing the socioeconomic impact of publicly funded research with insights from the Institute for Scientific Information.<\/em><\/p>\n

In research and higher education circles, there is a widespread notion that the socioeconomic impact of research is a new concern for funding agencies. It can become an onerous distraction: difficult to measure and rarely the main impetus behind research effort.<\/p>\n

In fact, the expectation that publicly funded research should pay off for the public investor has long been a part of the package. For this reason, we at the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)TM<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0have been investigating just these topics for much of the past few decades.<\/p>\n

The evolution of public investment in scientific advancement<\/h3>\n

Historical examples that demonstrate the tangible outcomes of publicly funded research abound.<\/p>\n

In the third century B.C.E., Archimedes reportedly appealed to King Hiero for research support and convinced him of the merit of his ideas by presenting pilot data and a practical demonstration of a pulley and rope system capable of moving a fully loaded ship up a beach. As a result, he was given access to the \u2018resources of the city\u2019 \u2013 a city that made other military uses of his innovative research, although we weren\u2019t there to check those metrics.<\/p>\n

Government institutional funding of science in Britain formally started in the 17th century C.E. King Charles II granted \u00a3100 a year to the first \u2018King\u2019s Astronomical Observator\u2019 leading to the establishment of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich in 1675. This in turn boosted the competency of a naval empire. The first two independent U.K. Research Councils were the Medical (1913) and the Agricultural (1931). The significance and utility of these state and public investments is pretty clear.<\/p>\n

Publicly funded research enjoyed a boom period after 1945, with the impetus in the U.S. government of Vannevar Bush\u2019s \u2018Science, the Endless Frontier<\/a>\u2019 and Harold Wilson\u2019s 1963 vision, \u2018the white heat of this (scientific) revolution<\/a>\u2019 in the U.K. Perhaps it was this golden age that spawned an internalized view of what is important, influential and worthy of esteem \u2013 and the perception that academic research and societal improvement are interlocked.<\/p>\n

Navigating the challenges of economic shifts<\/h3>\n

But there is never enough money for all the science we could do. Budget constraints inevitably followed the global oil crisis of the 1970s and prompted the need for greater selectivity in research funding.<\/p>\n

In 1986, the U.K. Advisory Board for the Research Councils (ABRC) published \u2018A Strategy for the Science Base<\/a>\u2019 with new assessment criteria \u2018which give due weight to considerations of applicability and other external [factors]\u2019. In addition to the \u2018internal\u2019 criteria of excellence, timeliness and pervasiveness, these externalities were: exploitability \u2013 potential for nationally profitable industrial or commercial use; applicability \u2013 potential for social, environmental or policy use; and significance for education and training.<\/p>\n

As part of the ABRC Secretariat, I began to explore data sources for assessment during the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was challenging and the data were extremely poor in most areas. One source stood out: the Science Citation Index<\/a>\u2122 of then Philadelphia based ISI emerged as the most promising source for quantitative assessments, aided at the economic level by the work of Ben Martin and others at SPRU \u2013 Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex.<\/p>\n

Initial evaluations were very \u2018helicopter\u2019 level and did not suggest a strong new methodology, although analytics and indicators based on publications and citations later became a small industry. It also became evident that a singular perspective on research \u2018value\u2019 was insufficient and necessitated a more complex approach.<\/p>\n

Global responses to the need for research impact assessment<\/h3>\n

Calls for the demonstration of the societal benefits of public research investments \u2013 notably by ISI founder Eugene Garfield<\/a> \u2013 prompted strategic responses from both governments and institutions, e.g. our strategic advice to the U.K. government provided the underpinning for the 1993 whitepaper<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At much the same time, the U.S. Congress passed the \u2018Government Performance and Results Act\u2019 (1993) requiring agencies to prepare annual performance plans and reports. These clearly pointed along a path towards multifaceted approaches when determining what research should be funded and whether projects had delivered an appropriate outcome.<\/p>\n

The European Commission also implemented diverse and comprehensive evaluation for the Framework Program for research. In 2004, when I chaired the EC Monitoring Committee for the Evaluation of FP6, we were provided with a spread of data on assessments prior to funding, data monitoring on progress, and traditional evaluations as projects approached outcomes.<\/p>\n

Sadly, national agencies with more constrained budgets often focus solely on internal research criteria when prioritizing ideas and reporting outcomes. Two key things explain why:<\/p>\n