This month’s post – the first of the new decade – is aimed specifically
at anyone preparing a research-funding proposal to one of the UKRI (UK Research
and Innovation) Research Councils – including Innovate UK and the Science and
Technology Facilities Council, and also the animals-in-science organisation
NC3Rs. It's a rather long post, but my aim is to save you time and anguish in the long run.
With few exceptions, pretty much every research proposal
submitted to UKRI will require a mandatory two-page (max) ‘Pathways to impact’
statement that must be uploaded with the rest of the proposal. It’s not
uncommon for other funders to ask for something similar too, so the information
below may have a degree of relevance beyond just UKRI (and NC3Rs) proposals.
Just what is a Pathways to impact statement
anyway?
Let’s first clear something up, and consider what the
Pathways to impact statement definitely is not.
It is not a description of
the impact that you intend for your proposed research. You have an opportunity
to summarise this in the ‘Impact summary’ section, where you’ll set out some
details of who you expect will benefit and how. And of course the Case for
support will also provide an opportunity to discuss the impact potential of the
research. Instead, the Pathways to impact statement is a description of what
you and your project team can reasonably do to maximise the chances of the
intended societal and economic impact actually
happening. As such, it’s very
much a companion document to the Impact summary.
A colleague of mine likes to use a ‘box of fireworks’
analogy when it comes to discussing research impact. A research project – the
work packages and methods to be used – is the box full of fireworks. The
beautiful multi-coloured display that those fireworks will produce is the impact. Extending the metaphor, the
Pathways to impact statement is a description of how you plan to set the
fireworks off in such a way as to ensure they give a spectacular show.
Is anyone really that interested?
Before we dive right in to the nuts and bolts of writing
your Pathways document, let’s take a brief aside to consider the importance of
this mandatory document. UKRI states that:
“A clearly thought through and acceptable Pathways to Impact is an essential component of a research proposal and a condition of funding. Grants will not be allowed to start until a clearly thought through and acceptable Pathways to Impact statement is received.”
The implication of the above is that it’s theoretically
possible for a Research Council panel to award a grant, conditional on the
applicant/s having another go at writing their Pathways to impact statement and
making a better fist of it second time around. And while it’s not unheard of
for this to happen, it would be a very risky strategy indeed to count on the
brilliance of your proposed project dazzling the evaluators to such an extent
that they turn a blind eye to your half-baked Pathways to impact. In reality,
the Pathways document is part of the
overall proposal, and reviewers will evaluate it along with the rest of the
proposal’s content. They will look at it critically, and may take the view that
a weak Pathways statement is indicative of a weak proposal. Sometimes it may effectively
be the decider if your proposal is closely tied with a number of others around
the ‘fund/don’t fund’ cut-off point. So don’t risk it!
An important section it may be, but many academics seem not
to relish writing it. A few regard it with something akin to outright terror. I
don’t think it should be so difficult to write though, and I hope that the
step-by-step approach outlined below may help to demystify the process.
Step 0: Before you start
As we’ve seen, the Pathways document is not primarily a
description of anticipated impact but rather a description of what you’ll do to
make sure that impact actually happens and achieves maximum real-world benefit.
So it makes absolute sense to write your Impact summary first, so that you completely understand your impact aims and you’re
completely clear about what impact
you’ll be facilitating. You might be interested in reading a previous blog post about writing the Impact summary section.
Step 0.5: A couple more things to help postpone
the moment when you have to start writing
The Research Councils typically specify that the page
margins for your Pathways document must be no less than 2cm all round, and that
you must use no smaller than 11pt font – usually a sans-serif font like Arial.
Line spacing must be no narrower than single. Double-check the funder’s
particular requirements in this respect, and then set up your document accordingly.
Of course, your margins can be wider if you want, and you can use a bigger font
and more generous line spacing if you like. No one says that you can’t make
your document look a little bit pretty either. And don’t feel the need to fill
two pages just for the sake of it – UKRI says that “it is not expected that all applications will require [two whole
pages].”
Step 1: Making an easy start
The blank sheet of paper can impose a curious form of
tyranny on the writer, so it’s always nice to be able to pick off some
low-hanging fruit in terms of stuff that needs to be written. Start then with
the title – I suggest ‘Pathways to impact: [the title of your research proposal]’.
Although it’s part of a larger proposal,
the Pathways to impact statement is a standalone document so a title is always helpful.
Consider also including the name of the funding scheme and the applicant’s name
beneath it. So, for example:
Pathways to impact: Using linked health records to evaluate chronic gum disease as a risk factor for later-life dementia
MRC Researcher-led Grant: PI Dr A. May Dupname
Step 2: A quick introductory recap
Again bearing in mind that this is a standalone document, it’s
generally useful to include a short introductory paragraph briefly summarising
the research, its importance, and its intended impact in terms of who it will
benefit and how. You won’t be covering anything that you haven’t already
covered elsewhere in the proposal, so keep it short – I’d suggest probably no
more than 6-8 lines. Refer to the Impact summary if necessary rather than
repeating too much if its contents.
Still nice and easy so far, hey?
I’ll note here that while UKRI doesn’t think everyone should
need two whole pages for their Pathways document, you may find you’ve got so
much to say that you’re struggling for space. If this is indeed the case, and
you really don’t see any obvious way of shortening, then I guess the output of
steps 1 and 2 is an obvious candidate for cutting. It’s all nice to have, but
perhaps not absolutely essential.
Step 3: List the targets for your impact
activities …
Now we’re getting right into the meat of the Pathways
document. Thinking back to your Impact summary (you’ve written that already,
right?), you probably worked under two main headings – ‘Who will benefit’ and ‘How
will they benefit’. Each beneficiary, stakeholder and user group (and in
some cases each individual beneficiary – for example a specific industry partner)
that you’ve identified will be a target group for tailored impact activities. They
will need to be dealt with in turn within your Pathways to impact statement.
You might decide to use sub-headings to demarcate these sections clearly.
Step 4: … and describe your planned impact
activities for each target group
Imagine for a moment that you had previously designed a
project to benefit dementia patients and their families, plus people at risk of
suffering from dementia in the future. There are also potential benefits for the
healthcare system that diagnoses and treats dementia; the pharmaceutical
industry, which stands to gain from information about new targets in dementia
prevention and treatment; and the social-care system that’s responsible for
providing ongoing care and support for those who are no longer able to look
after themselves. You and your collaborators undertook the project
successfully, and you now have a whole load of really-exciting new data about a
significant modifiable risk factor for dementia. So what next? One thing’s for
sure, if you just sit on your data and do nothing with it then it’s unlikely
ever to lead to any meaningful impact for anyone.
It’s vital to make sure that the right information gets communicated
in a timely manner, to the right people, and in the right ways, if you’re going
to achieve your impact aims. You need some targeted and tailored impact activities.
If for example the key to making a positive difference among
people who might one day suffer from dementia is behavioural change, then some
clear and understandable messages about that change are needed. And you’ll need
to get those messages out to as many people as possible, particularly those in
high-risk groups, using whatever means are most effective. This could involve engaging
with the mainstream media, and perhaps working with high-profile charitable
organisations.
Perhaps there are implications for healthcare policymakers
and maybe clinicians themselves – if so then how best to reach these audiences?
Once again you’ll need to refine your key messages and the way in which you
deliver them, and describe how you’ll reach the people and organisations who
matter (often the decision-makers) within those audience groups. This might
involve presenting at targeted healthcare-sector conferences, holding bespoke
workshops, preparing articles for the specialist media, and maybe exploiting
your existing network of influential contacts in these areas.
Maybe the pharmaceutical industry can benefit from your
results by developing new treatments – so how best to engage with them? Perhaps
you already have links with the industry, or maybe it’s once again a case of
targeting appropriate industry publications, conferences and other events.
And so on, generally with at least one feasible and
appropriately-designed impact activity planned for each main beneficiary group
based clearly on their particular needs, priorities and interests. It’s good to
be flexible in your approach to securing impact, and to show that you’re
focused on impact outcomes rather
than just activities and processes. I’m sure most reviewers will be pleased to
know that, should an opportunity to maximise impact present itself, you’ll be
sufficiently agile to grasp it.
Step 5: Take a quick sanity check
A handful of watch-points to consider at this juncture.
First off, you’ll note that nowhere above have I mentioned academic impact and activities designed to achieve it. The Pathways
document is just about societal and economic
impact, and while it may be legitimate – particularly for a fundamental-science
proposal – to acknowledge that achieving effective academic impact in the short
term is the key to securing longer term real-world benefit, this is not the
place to discuss academic impact and activities designed to achieve it in any
sort of detail. Save all this for the ‘Academic beneficiaries’ section.
Secondly, note that Pathways to impact isn’t just about public engagement. It’s often worthwhile
to communicate your research to the wider public, particularly if the subject
area is likely to garner general interest, and raising public awareness and
understanding of science (or other scholarly research) can to some extent be an
impact in itself. But it’s not typically the primary impact aim of a research
project, so public-engagement activities shouldn’t normally form the core of a
Pathways to impact statement. Impact is about achieving real-word change, and
not just raising awareness as an end in itself. If you are writing in some
public-engagement activities, note that the best ones often adopt a two-way
approach rather than being simple unidirectional outreach.
Finally, I cannot over-emphasise the importance of specificity. There’s a world of
difference between saying “I will attend conferences and write articles for the
specialist media”, and saying “I will submit an abstract to the Alzheimer’s
Society Annual Conference (2022) and target specialist media including the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and the British Medical Journal – in all
instances due to the extent of their reach among UK and international clinical
audiences.” Being specific about the details of your proposed impact activities
shows that you’ve thought about them properly and are taking this aspect of your
project seriously – and that you haven’t just copied and pasted a line or two
of generic text from a previous grant application.
Step 6: Ramp up that specificity!
An overview and description of your proposed impact
activities lies at the heart of your Pathways document, and so the more
specific detail you can provide about them the better. Where possible and
appropriate, consider trying to add some of the following details for each
activity to indicate how it will be planned and managed:- Timetable – when will the activity take place, over what duration, and will it be repeated?
- People involved – which members of your team will be needed, and who else will you need to participate?
- Skills needed – for example if you propose to produce an information video or animation then will you need to outsource some of the specialist tasks?
- Deliverables – will there be tangible outputs from any of your impact activities – for example a suite of information leaflets, or a special report aimed at a particular audience group?
- An assessment of feasibility – it may be possible to give previous examples of similar activities that you have undertaken successfully
Every would-be
critic likes to see a claim backed up by evidence and a solid track record, and
your proposed impact activities are no exception. If you have some good
examples of successful and effective impact activities from previous projects
then refer to them, particularly if they’re similar in some way or otherwise of
relevance to what you’re proposing to do here. Perhaps you have on-going
engagement with relevant stakeholders – once again be sure to mention this, as
it will add considerable credibility to your impact claims. Brevity is the key
though; the Pathways document is primarily a forward-looking statement of
intent rather than a résumé of your past activities.
Step 8: Cost it all up
Many impact activities come with certain financial costs,
and UKRI will expect you to include these in your project’s budget where applicable.
There’s no harm in setting out briefly the resources needed for your impact activities
and their associated costs in the Pathways document – once again, it
demonstrates that you’re thinking through the details and taking the whole
thing seriously.
Step 9: Explain how you’ll monitor and
evaluate your activities
It’s important to keep tabs on whether project tasks are
running to schedule and are meeting their objectives. Impact activities are no
exception, so it’s good to explain briefly in your Pathways document what milestones
and measures you’ll use to evaluate their progress and effectiveness. In the
case of an information video, for example, a key milestone might be publication
of the completed video on a public-facing website, while a measure of the
effectiveness of this impact activity might be the number of downloads or
views.
A non-step – don’t do this!
If you’re aiming for a successful outcome it’s often helpful
to have an example of what success looks like to refer to. In the case of a
Pathways to impact statement this might be one that you put together for a
previously-funded project, the same thing from a colleague, or perhaps one of
the examples published online by research-impact guru Mark Reed.
I would though urge you to be very careful here, and avoid the very-real
temptation to take the lazy-person’s approach. A good Pathways document will
always be highly project specific, and so previously-successful examples are
likely to have only very limited relevance for your own proposal beyond
offering a general guide to the approach taken. Even here, beware – I’ve seen
funded proposals that had, to my mind, a rather weak Pathways to impact
statement that certainly didn’t tick off all of UKRI’s criteria. Okay, so they may have gotten away with it –
perhaps the rest of their proposal was absolutely stellar. But I’d steer clear
of the temptation to try to shoehorn your own list of stakeholder groups and impact
aims into an approach developed specifically for a completely different project.
And definitely don’t copy and paste!
But I’m a pure mathematician – there’s no
real-world impact that I can reasonably predict!
The renowned mathematician and set theorist W. Hugh Woodin
once made the following observation on the subject of impact:
“It’s a losing game to say that one area of mathematics will not have future application … Never make that prediction – you’ll lose!”
I agree, but it doesn’t provide much to work with when it
comes to constructing a convincing Pathways to Impact statement. Fortunately,
there’s a get-out for those who genuinely
cannot link their research to any form of measureable impact outside of
academia. While UKRI says that “being
able to describe a pathways to impact [sic] will apply for the vast majority of proposals”, they do acknowledge
that, exceptionally, this is not the case. They indicate that in this instance the
Pathways to impact document should be used to explain why it just isn’t
possible to complete this section in the normal manner. If you’re convinced this
applies to you (and in my own area of focus, the life sciences, it never
should!) then I’d recommend at least writing in some decently creative public-engagement
activities to educate and inform the public about your research. And if at all
possible, try to make some reasonable general predictions, perhaps based on historical
precedent, as to the types of field in which your work might eventually have an
impact – for example crypto security.
And that’s it – you’re about done. If you’ve followed each
of the above steps reasonably faithfully then you should now have in front of
you a passable Pathways to impact statement, ready for polishing and hopefully
passing around to collaborators, institutional impact professionals and perhaps
your non-academic project partners to critique.
Step 10 – because you just have to have 10
steps…
Step 10 is optional, and it’s aimed at anyone who’s left
still scratching their head. Mark Reed of specialist training company Fast
Track Impact has produced a free online ‘Pathway to Impact Builder’ that will
guide you through a series of questions and then spit out a draft Pathways
statement. It’s not quite the no-effort magic solution that this short
description might suggest (come back to me Mark when all I need to do is put in
a project title and then press ‘Go’…), but it’s undeniably a neat idea. You can
try it here.
The views and opinions expressed in this blog are mine alone and are in no way endorsed by my employer. Factual information and guidance are provided on a 'best-endeavour' basis and may become out of date over time. No responsibility can be taken for any action or inaction taken or not in respect of the content of this blog. The Fast Track Impact 'flower' logo above is the intellectual property of the owner and is copyright protected. Edvard Munch's wonderful but very haunting painting The Scream is in the public domain, as by extension are photographs of it.
