A review of literature on evaluating the scientific, social and political impact of social sciences and humanities research

Authors : Emanuela Reale,  Dragana Avramov,  Kubra Canhial,  Claire Donovan,  Ramon Flecha, Poul Holm,  Charles Larkin,  Benedetto Lepori,  Judith Mosoni-Fried,  Esther Oliver, Emilia Primeri,  Lidia Puigvert,  Andrea Scharnhorst,  Andràs Schubert,  Marta Soler Sàndor, Soòs  Teresa, Sordé  Charles, Travis  René Van Horik

Recently, the need to contribute to the evaluation of the scientific, social, and political impact of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) research has become a demand of policy makers and society.

The international scientific community has made significant advances that have transformed the impact of evaluation landscape. This article reviews the existing scientific knowledge on evaluation tools and techniques that are applied to assess the scientific impact of SSH research; the changing structure of social and political impacts of SSH research is investigated based on an overarching research question: to what extent do scholars attempt to apply methods, instruments, and approaches that take into account the distinctive features of SSH?

The review also includes examples of European Union (EU) projects that demonstrate these impacts. This article culminates in a discussion of the development of the assessment of different impacts and identifies limitations, and areas and topics to explore in the future.

URL : A review of literature on evaluating the scientific, social and political impact of social sciences and humanities research

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvx025