Our Impact Committee, comprised of Early Career Researchers from across roles, disciplines and geographies, are proudly leading HDR UK’s transformational approach to impact assessment ensuring that the Institute captures, understands, communicates, and celebrates outcomes and impacts across its programmes.

Assessing the outcomes and impacts of research at HDR UK provides accountability to the board and core funders, whilst strategically ensuring sustainability, inclusivity, and efficiency.

This new approach is the outcome of collaborative co-design work carried out together with the Impact Committee and building on feedback from the HDR UK Board, the Senior Leadership Team, the Professional Leaders Group, the Science and Infrastructure Integration Group, a community representative working group, and more.

In alignment with the initial decisions put forward for REF2028, the Impact Committee is committed to ensuring that:

  • Impact is broad and holistic – and inclusive of the diversity of impacts beyond ‘improved health’ such as enabling infrastructure, thought leadership, and more
  • Impact is decoupled from researchers – with a focus on team science and the many roles (both academic and beyond) that enable impact
  • Research culture is captured and counted

Who should submit a case study?

All HDR UK programmes, including those from the 1st and 2nd five years, are welcomed and encouraged to submit up to 10 case studies using the Case Study Template and returning directly to impact@hdruk.ac.uk by 24 June.

This includes all Driver Programmes, Infrastructure Pillars, Regions, and Partnership Programmes e.g. BHF Data Science Centre. In addition to this, we also expect where relevant, programmatic case studies describing outcomes and impacts from HDR UK’s first five years to be captured.

Anyone submitting a case study is encouraged to work closely with their programme lead and other teammates ahead of submission to ensure that the information provided is complete and to help avoid duplication. Individual programmes may wish to put in place their own plans to co-ordinate and/or approve submissions proactively – however, this is not mandatory and all case studies will be shared transparently.

  • As part of HDR UK’s updated approach to impact assessment, descriptions of impact and outcomes are captured annually in case studies authored in a prescribed template.

    Each case study includes information about:

    • work undertaken contributing to the impact, documented in the ‘underpinning research’ section. This may include, for example, methodology or process
    • the impact itself
    • the unique role of HDR UK
    • the contributions to open science, knowledge exchange, and research culture

    In general, case studies should be written using accessible language and avoid technical jargon. The use of acronyms and/or abbreviations should be defined and limited.  Information should not be repeated in the case study.

    We do not expect case studies to be unique and encourage you to draw on available text (or ‘recycle’), where copyright allows. In each section, should the required information already be available elsewhere, please do not duplicate work.  In these cases, please provide enough information for HDR UK to access and retrieve.

    Read the guidance for more information and download the case study template.

  • This approach has been designed with benefits for the research community in-mind, including for example:

    • Visibility to the Board and Core Funders – including deposition of all completed case studies in the MRC Case Study Databank.
    • Automatic consideration for the Susannah Boddie Award for Impact of the Year and the HDR UK Team of the Year Award.
    • Ease of reuse of impact narratives in websites, grant applications, CVs, and award applications
    • Preparation, and practice for, other assessments such as REF2028 – particularly capturing and reporting of research culture.
    • Support and training opportunities for all team members on impact and writing case studies
    • Until 12 March: Draft case study template and guidance available for review
    • 21 March: Case study template and accompanying guidance available on website
    • Mid April: Case study template and guidance circulated to all programme leads
    • Mid April to 24 June: Case study submission window
    • 24 June: Deadline for all case studies to be returned to HDR UK

  • We are committed to supporting the community throughout this process via webinars and drop-in sessions.

    Drop-in sessions for Writing an HDR UK Impact Case Study on 21 May and 20 June. Join the mailing list below to receive joining instructions.

    Should you have any immediate questions, please see the FAQs or contact impact@hdruk.ac.uk

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