The cultural impact of the impact agenda in Australia, UK and USA

Academic research is increasingly seen as important for solving a range of pressing policy issues, including economic, health, environmental, societal, security and defence. One increasingly prevalent approach is for governments and national bodies to introduce impact as a research evaluation criterion. In this paper, we frame such policies as cultural interventions, that is, as attempts to effect change in the norms and values that inhere within the academic research system. We interviewed n = 90 academics based in three systems which have such policies, Australia, UK and USA. Participants span natural science, engineering, humanities and social sciences, but all have a focus on some aspect of the development, application or (social) implications of artificial intelligence (AI). The norm that impact is/should be a motivation of research was widespread. However, this is not wholly a success story for the impact agenda. One of the cultural impacts of impact policies is to create or increase pre-existing tensions. For example, where members of a discipline feel that impact policies serve other disciplines better, this can create tensions between disciplines as well as a sense of longing for rhetoric to be matched by a reality of greater support and rewards for impact activities. And within fields, strongly implemented impact policies can create a new source of division around what impact should mean for a given discipline, and sharpen underlying contestations about a discipline’s core values and purposes. We conclude with policy implications for the effects and effectiveness of research impact evaluation.