Measuring Impacts of Science and Research on the Society: Development, Issues and Solutions

In the last three-hundred years, the role of research for the technological progress is undeniable. Successful societies have mechanisms for a quality knowledge transfer into the economy and society. As we are all aware off, scientific and research activities are not intended for themselves, therefore scientific and research results as well as the socio-economic impacts of the results are important too. The paper covers the analysis of socio-economic impacts of research that can be divided into economic, political/social, educational and other. A literature review demonstrates the great importance of the socio-economic impacts of the public funding of science and research. There is a number of developed and successful methods to maximize the socio-economic effects on research and development, consequently, numerous documented cases of good practice in the world. This allows for good management of research projects, from their preparation, implementation to completion, and later dissemination of results and transfer to the economy and non-economy. In the paper, we firstly discuss the history of measuring the impacts of results of science and research, than the assessment of the socio-economic effects of the research and issues related to that. The international waymarks of planning and monitoring of the research effects are presented as well. Finally, some suggestions for solutions to how to deal with measuring the impacts of research results are presented.