Time for change survey
results 2022

Beating hearts – societal change
Over 80% of academics say demonstrating the impact of research on society is important to them both personally and to their institutions, which is significantly up from four years ago. It seems to be less important to the older generation/those with 20+ experience post PhD.

Impact factors still strong
Two thirds still rely on citations and IFs remain the dominant metric for research quality. Compared to five years ago reliance placed on traditional metrics has risen significantly, suggesting a backward step during the pandemic.

Career & reputation drivers
The importance placed on career advancement and improved reputation (73%) by demonstrating the impact of their work has risen in the last year.

Hungry for change
A strong appetite for change remains, over a third are very open and taking action, another third very open but not yet taken action. Latin America and UK lead in putting plans into action, Australasia seem to struggle and be behind the rest of the world.

Rhetoric & action misaligned
Little progress in institutions in driving change compared to four years ago, and still only 17% of institutions have taken any action.

A broader perspective
Main changes wanted are greater value placed on the impact on society (37%), particularly marked by Asian, Indian and Sub-Sahara African researchers, 27% want broader metrics and 14% want a change in the way incentives are used to publish research work.

Barriers to change
Forty seven per cent say the main challenges are difficulty in tracking research beyond academia and incentives for career progression still aligned to traditional metrics. The issue of a lack of funding for open research rose significantly as a perceived barrier with 26% saying last year they saw it as a problem compared to 42% this year.

Growing appetite for open
The biggest shift in the last four years has been the appetite for open access and sharing of open data sets (46% considering this compared to 29% four years ago).

Support for new formats
Thirty seven per cent are considering publishing non-traditional content such as short-form, policy briefs, blogs, etc.

Impact at the start
A strong desire (45%) for better tracking of potential societal impact at the start of a research project (not retrospectively trying to measure).

Growing demand for policy briefs
Seventy four per cent want them to be more accessible, 70% say they are an important route to get academic research outside of academia, 69% want their research to be translated into a policy brief and 56% feel confident in writing a policy brief.

Collaboration outside academia
Two thirds want more opportunities for collaboration between industry and practice, and it remains the biggest single change the sector wants to see.

Q1. On a scale of 1–10 where 1 is not at all important and 10 is very important, how important is demonstrating impact of research on society to...? (Average score out of 10.)

Q2. How is the quality of your research impact currently measured? (Please select up to three options.)

Q3. On a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is not at all important and 5 is very important, how important are the following factors in helping achieve broader impact with your work?

Q4. How strongly do you support the idea of changing the way research impact is measured? (Please select 1 answer.)

Q5. How supportive / interested are those in your broader institution in driving change when it comes to other ways to measure research impact? (Please select one answer.)

Q6. What main change would you like to see in the way research quality is measured? (Please select one option.)

Q7. Which of the following do you consider to be the biggest 'challenges' of changing the way research impact is assessed? (Please select all that apply.)

Q8. When it comes to your research, what types of change would you consider implementing? (Please select all that apply.)

Q9. In your opinion what are the best way(s) to enable change to happen? (Please select up to three options.)