Looking Back: Evolving Public Health Perspectives on Research Impact

Abstract

This chapter takes a more historical approach, using public health as a case study to explore how views of efforts to stimulate and reward research impact have changed over time. To achieve this, the chapter compares the views of academics interviewed in 2003-2007, the run up to the RAE in 2008, just before the emergence of ‘research impact’, with the views of academics working in the same field in 2011-2015, who experienced REF2014 and the first attempt to assess impact case studies.