Impact types and approaches in assessing research impact: from a scoping review to a comprehensive framework

This paper reports on a comprehensive scoping review of 822 articles that analyse the academic and/or non-academic impact of research through established or newly proposed frameworks and tools. It examines how research impact is conceived, approached, and assessed, and to what extent impact assessments and approaches differ across various fields. The results confirm the increasing interest in assessing research impact, the dominance of countries with established frameworks and official evaluation structures (such as the USA, the UK, and Australia), and the prevalent focus on social sciences and humanities and health sciences. Quantitative analysis stands out in analysing academic impact, while qualitative analysis is used mainly for non-academic impact. Outcome-focused approaches dominate in both types of impact; however, process-focused approaches are also adopted in the assessment of non-academic impact. Through analysis of the activities and indicators associated with these different approaches and views of impact, we develop and illustrate a framework that brings together the dimensions of impact types (academic and non-academic) and approaches (outcome-focused and process-focused) to assist researchers and institutions in their impact assessment processes.