The Mis-conceptualisation of Societal Impact: Why the Swiss Approach to Societal Impact is Productive and not Inexistent

Abstract

Societal impact as a buzz word is high on the agenda of policy-makers around the world. Often, the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) is cited as the initiator of making the societal impact of research relevant and visible. Equally often, it is said that in Switzerland societal impact is not yet considered in higher education policy. In this paper, I show that both claims are as wrong as they are common. I argue that the UK REF's “impact agenda” is strongly linked to a specific ideology and does not represent the only approach to valorizing and fostering the research-society nexus. By pointing out some major issues in impact evaluation and presenting how the research-society nexus is discussed in Swiss science policy as a contrasting case, I sketch an approach to impact evaluation based on the role of research in society that considers different forms of knowledge generation and dissemination.