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Library services for researchers - Research impact

Societal impact

Societal impact is about creating a verifiable contribution beyond academia to the economy, society, culture, public policy, public services, health, the environment, or quality of life. In other words, the impact of academic research on broader society and the changes as a direct result of your research.

The University of Wollongong creates pathways for research to have beneficial impacts in its broader community. UOW encourages and nurtures engagement with industry, community and government to tackle the most pressing challenges, introduce disruptive technologies and change our world for the better.

Evidence of societal impact

Much like evidence of research impact, evidence of societal impact can be qualitative or quantitative, and depending on the type of research output and the type of evidence you need, it will be in various places and may or may not be publicly available.

For evidence which is only publicly available temporarily or not at all, like conference papers, testimonials or websites, it is good practice to capture and store the evidence locally, so you have access to it when you need it. If you haven’t started this already, plan for evidence collection within your research projects and consider where you will keep or store the evidence you collect. 

The following contains some examples of evidence types that may be useful when referencing the impact of your work outside academia:

Image created by UOW Library and shared under CC BY-SA licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Image created by UOW Library and shared under CC BY-SA licence.

Image transcript: Evidence to support societal impact claims

Impact Tracker

UOW staff have access to ImpactTracker through the myVVid platform to track and store evidence of impact:

  • Impact Tracker - to plan and collect evidence and write about your impact
  • Track Impact - for public impact stories and a collaboration platform
  • Impact Academy - for impact training available to subscribers only.

Further UOW support for can be found on the Research and Innovation Division’s Research impact page (UOW staff intranet).

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