Defining and Measuring Research Impact in the Humanities, Social Sciences and Creative Arts in the Digital Age

There are powerful reasons for and against researchers taking the lead in formulating research impact measures for disciplines in the humanities, social sciences and creative arts (HSSCA). On balance, the reasons in favour are stronger, not least because such measures are otherwise apt to be formulated badly by those with little expertise. This invites us to inquire about the sorts of measures would best apply to HSSCA disciplines (among others), and whether some of the more popular impact measures, such as citation indices, really are reasonable indicators of impact or quality in these domains. It also raises questions about how burgeoning modes of research, knowledge mobilization, and impact tracking in the digital domain play into HSSCA research measures. On reflection, empirically adequate and arithmetically meaningful HSSCA impact measures will be pluralistic, non-reductive, and highly context-dependent; they are unlikely to lend themselves to the current pseudoscience of single-dimensional ordinal rankings between research institutions. Nevertheless they may support comparisons of interesting sorts, and enable assessments for accountability and planning purposes.