The IMPACT-EV consortium is composed of a research team with experienced researchers from eight EU Member States which represent the territorial diversity of Europe (i.e. South, East, West and Central Europe). All the members of the consortium belong to research teams and organizations with extensive expertise in the field of evaluation and impact of research at the scientific, social and political levels. At the same time, they have contributed to the field from a wide range of disciplines, building thus a very interdisciplinary research group. In this sense, researchers’ backgrounds include sociology, political science, law, scientometrics, history, psychology, economics and health. The multidimensional and interdisciplinary approach is a crucial added value for the analysis that IMPACT-EV covers.

CREA – University of Barcelona, Spain.

Main researcher: Ramon Flecha

Research team: Marta Soler, Lídia Puigvert, Esther Oliver (UB), Teresa Sordé (UAB), Sandra Racionero-Plaza (CREA-UB), Aitor Gómez (URV) and Elena Duque (UdG).

CREA is an interdisciplinary research centre of the University of Barcelona. It involves sixty-three professors and researchers from very diverse fields from the SSH. CREA has participated in many research projects since FP4 and holds a strong record of achieving social and political impact from research evidence. Due to these achievements CREA researchers have been called for scientific, policy and social impact assessments at national and at EU level. Prior research experience showing this expertise is the coordination of the FP5 Project WORKALO (2001-2004) and the FP6 Integrated Project INCLUD-ED. (2006-2011). Drawing from INCLUD-ED’s results, 50 articles have been published and accepted for publication in diverse JCR-ISI peer reviewed journals. Along the same line, CREA’s expertise was selected for a study -directed by Dr. Flecha- on SSH research evaluation entrusted by AGAUR, the research funding agency of the Catalan Government. All these expertise both in coordinating and managing successful projects as well as in tackling the particular topic of analysis of this project will contribute to guarantee that the project’s objectives are suitably and efficiently met.

MTAK KIK-TTO, Hungary.

Research team: András Schubert, Judit Mosoni-Fried, Sándor Soós.

MTAK KIK-TTO, the Department of Science Policy and Scientometrics of the Library and Information Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, was set up on January 1st 2012, from the merging of the Institute for Research Organization (IRO) with the Library of MTA (Hungarian Academy of Sciences). A great share of the research activity of IRO has been transferred to the MTAK KIK-TTO. The Department’s main profile is the quantitative analysis of scientific research. In this capacity MTAK KIK-TTO is participating in the FP7 SISOB Project An Observatorium for Science in Society based in Social Models. Several staff members are invited to contribute also to other FP7 projects, e.g. DYNANETS: Computing Real-World Phenomena with Dynamically Changing Complex Networks, FP7 FET-Open project; PACITA Parliaments and Civil Society in Technology Assessment: Broadening the knowledge base in policy making.

DANS-KNAW, The Netherlands.

Research team: Andrea Scharnhorst.

DANS is an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and of the Netherlands Organisation for Research (NWO). DANS is responsible for permanent storage and access of research data, with a focus on, but not limited to the arts and humanities and social sciences in the Netherlands. DANS hosts an Electronic Self-Arching System (EASY) – a digital archive for research data; and NARCIS – National Academic Research and Collaborations Information System – the Dutch Research Information System, combing information about researchers, projects, organizations, publications and data. DANS is the expertise centre in the Netherlands (and an international player) for permanent storage and data accessibility (data management, metadata standards, quality guidelines, data migration, persistent identifiers, enhanced publications, licensing, etc.). Its further expertise encompasses data modelling, semantic web technologies and designing user interfaces.

Center for Organisational Research (CORe), Università della Svizzera Italiana, Switzerland.

Research team: Benedetto Lepori and Kubra Canhilal.

One of the two main expertise areas of the Centre for Organisational Research (CORe) at Università della Svizzera Italiana is the management and performance of research and higher education institutions. CORe’s expertise has been the development of indicators for research evaluation for research funding agencies, universities or public administrations. CORe led the European Network of Indicators Designers (ENID), a Network clearly oriented to build indicators for research impact evaluation and has coordinated many research projects related to IMPACT-EV aims. For instance, they coordinated projects like Indicators for monitoring the European Research Area (aimed at creating a set of indicators for the monitoring of the ERA), the European Observatory of Research-Active Universities and National Public Research Funding Agencies (aimed to create a web-based observatory with comparable indicators of European research universities and funding agencies), or TRUE: transforming universities in Europe.

Institute for Economic Research on Firms and Growth (CERIS–CNR), Italy.

Research team:  Emanuela Reale and Emilia Primeri. (website www.dienneti.it)

CERIS, Istituto di Ricerca sul l’Impresa e lo Sviluppo (Institute for Economic Research on Firms and Growth) is the main centre of the Italian CNR (National Research Council) which specialises in applied industrial and managerial economics. Among the main fields of on-going research activity at CERIS is the Study on the research system, the technological transfer and the research evaluation methods. In this sense, CERIS-CNR has a cluster called Science and Innovation, which is carrying out projects related to IMPACTEV aims. For instance, CERIS-CNR has a long experience in researching diversity of impacts among SSH, on tools, methods, models and indictors for evaluating research impacts, etc. An example of this scientific trajectory is the EC-JOREP project coordinated by Emanuela Reale. This project was aimed at evaluating Joint and Open research Programmes of the ERA. In this project CERIS-CNR researchers identified four types of opportunities for research projects to have impact. These opportunities makes possible to observe and evaluate research impact potentialities instead of evaluating final impact –sometimes difficult to be evaluated-.

Trinity Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.

Research team: Poul Holm, and Charles Travis

The Trinity Long Room Hub is Trinity College Dublin’s Arts and Humanities research institute. It was established in 2006, and in October 2007 received an award of almost 11 million euros from the Higher Education Authority under the PRTLI IV Programme. The Trinity Long Room Hub encourages and fosters innovative interdisciplinary research across the entire spectrum of the Arts and Humanities at Trinity. They have a particular interest in stimulating research that will encourage the application of new technologies to arts and humanities research. Trinity Long Room Hub operates a regular Methods Seminar designed to showcase both the opportunities and problems associated with the application of new technologies to arts and humanities research. Research projects carried out at TLRH are related to analyze and adapt the Humanities to social and technological change. For instance, it develops several Digital Humanities projects aiming at analyzing the possibilities of digital archives for the Humanities. TLRH also counts on a long tradition in discussing the evaluation of the Humanities. This is one of the most interesting elements that TLRH has for IMPACT-EV. Several researchers have participated actively in forums or committees regarding with monitoring and evaluating Humanities research. For instance, TLRH hosts the European Consortium of Humanities Institutes and Centres which pursues the highest international standards of excellence and with an acute sense of social and political relevance in Europe. To have the voice of Humanities Research Centers inside IMPACT-EV will be an excellent mechanism to account for the specificities of the Humanities in the different types of research impact (scientific, policy and social).

Population and Social Policy Consultants (PSPC), Belgium.

Researcher: Dragana Avramov.

PSPC is an autonomous research organisation based in Brussels that brings together researchers and experts around interdisciplinary research projects in social sciences and policy impact studies at the international, national and regional level. PSPC has expertise in policy advice and policy impact analysis as well as in organizing, analyzing and disseminating results of qualitative and quantitative surveys on public policies, policy acceptance and stakeholder consultations in the areas of population and development, poverty, housing deprivation, homelessness, work, gender and family dynamics and migration, impact of public policies, and foresight studies. Studies on expectations towards policies and impact of policies have been at the core of scientific work of PSPC since its foundation in 1995. PSPC was a partner in the EC funded projects: Population Policy Acceptance Study: The Viewpoints of Citizens and Policy Actors Regarding the Management of Population Related Change (DIALOG); Needs for Female Immigrants and their Integration in Ageing Societies (FEMAGE); Network for Integrated European Population Studies (NIEPS); Integrated Forms of Co-operation in Housing Stock Policy for the Housing Provision of Risk Groups (COOP); The Housing Dimension of Welfare Reform (IMPACT); Emergency and Transitory Housing for Homeless People: Needs and Best Practices (EUROHOME) and policy reviewing for DG Research in the Area of Social Exclusion (poverty, social stratification) and Social Security Systems linked with Pensions.

Health Economics Research Group (HERG), Brunel University, United Kingdom.

Researcher: Claire Donovan.

The Health Economics Research Group (HERG) is one of Brunel University’s leading Specialist Research Institutes. In the UK’s 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, 85% of HERG’s research activity rated as ‘international standard’, and 15% as ‘worldclass’. HERG’s strategic focus is on the economic evaluation of a broad range of clinical and health service technologies and its dual aim is to provide applied, policy-relevant research whilst developing and refining  methods to increase the rigour and relevance of such studies. A steadily expanding stream of research on the ‘payback’ from research itself is an extension to HERG’s focus on economic evaluation, and consists of a multidimensional categorization of the ‘impacts’ or benefits of research, including social and policy impacts,and a model of how to assess them. This ‘payback’ research has established HERG as an international leader in developing approaches to assessing the broader social impacts of health research.

Cardiff University, United Kingdom.

Research team: Charles Larkin.

According to the REF-2014, the Cardiff Metropolitan is the highest ranked ‘new’ (post 1992) university in Wales. Its research is organised through a number of research centres, offering applied research and consultancy to business and industry, and to local and national governments across the UK and abroad. The University´s achievements in social, cultural and economic development as well as in improvement in human health have placed the institution at the forefront of developments in these fields. Regarding funding for research, since 2008 the University has seen a significant increase in bidding activity for European funding across all Schools, Units and Centres. Among the multidisciplinary research themes of the School of Management at the Cardiff University, the researchers address in deep the issues of Governance and accountability in the field of higher education, knowledge creation and control, and public-private partnerships.