Each year RCUK invest around £3 billion in research and research training in the UK covering the full spectrum of academic disciplines, and this has a huge impact on the wellbeing and economy of the UK.
Working together with our wider communities and other partners, we want to encourage researchers to be actively involved in thinking about how they will achieve excellence with impact and to explore the pathways for realising impacts. One way of doing this is through the implementation of the Academic Beneficiaries, Impact Summaries and Pathways to Impact (formerly known as Impact Plans) within the Research Council application and assessment process.
The following principles define, in broad terms, the approach and expectations of the Research Councils:
- Excellent research with impact is central to Research Council activities,
- The onus rests with research applicants to consider and demonstrate how
they would achieve excellence with impact,
- Research Council guidance and assessment procedures aim to:
- maximise both excellence and impact, and
- ensure user perspectives are strongly represented
At the application stage we do not expect applicants or peer reviewers to be able to predict the economic or societal impacts that research will achieve. However, we want to encourage applicants to consider and explore, in ways that are appropriate given the nature of the research they are proposing to conduct, potential pathways to impact, for example through engagement or collaboration with partners.