The evaluators' eye: impact assessment and academic peer review

Offers an empirical analysis of how academic peer review panels mediate the traditionally non-academic criterion of societal impact.

The UK's 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF2014) for the first time included an 'Impact' criterion that considered how research had influenced society, beyond academia.

Using a series of interviews with REF2014 Main Panel A evaluators, the book explores how a dominant definition of Impact was constructed within panels and how this led to the development of strategies around valuing it as an ambiguous object.