Comprehensive Impact

Comprehensive Impact, as opposed to Academic Impact is an umbrella term for the impact of scientific work on society, economy and policy. Comprehensive impact covers a broad range of activities and is difficult - if not impossible - to define prescriptively. I coined the term Comprehensive Impact in my 2017 paper Measuring scientific impact beyond academia: An assessment of existing impact metrics and proposed improvements

Why Should We Study Comprehensive Impact?

Why Scientists Care About Comprehensive Impact

Lots of papers write about the effect that the UK's focus on comprehensive impact affects the quality of research and individual researchers

Why Research Funders Care About Comprehensive Impact

For research councils, being able to illustrate how their research impacts the economy and society helps them to compete for and justify their continued funding.

Why The Public Care About Comprehensive Impact

Shortcomings of Academic Impact and Where Comprehensive Impact Helps

Scientific papers are

Related Definitions

REF Definition of Impact

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) - a UK-wide scientometric instrument for research quality defines impact as:

an effect on, change or benefit to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia - REF 2011

The REF definition of impact is ambiguous as it does not specify the type of impact - I would argue that generating lots of citations is still impact but limited to academia. That is why we specify the term "comprehensive impact" when we talk about this concept.