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The purpose of this paper, using an evidence‐based management theoretical lens, is to examine research impact to provide guidance to supply chain management academics in evidencing and exploiting the outputs, outcomes and impact of their research.

Evidence‐based management theory is examined and applied to types of academic research impact. The distinction between academic and non‐academic impact is developed into a supply chain framework of research outputs, transfer, outcomes, impact and national/international benefits. Impact of supply chain management research is explored through a case study in the English National Health Service. Future opportunities and challenges for supply chain management researchers arising from increasing demand for and supply of evidence are discussed.

Author academic impact and citations are found to be increasingly important building blocks of evidence‐based evaluations of individual academics, journals, research quality assessments of groups and universities, and global rankings of universities. Supply chain management researchers can compare their impact with other areas of academia. Non‐academic impact of research has been assessed by funders of research projects and has spread to research quality assessments of universities.

Bibliometrics provide evidence of author and journal impact that can be used in human resource decisions, research quality assessments and global rankings of universities; this availability enables a debate on appropriate use of academic impact evidence. Supply chain management academics evidencing non‐academic research impact on business, society and economy will enable governments and funders of research to evaluate value for money return on their investment.

This perspective of evidence‐based evaluation of research impact and its implications might encourage debate on academic and non‐academic impact and encourage supply chain researchers to consider evidencing impact in their research design and methodology.

Several frameworks have been developed to map and document scientific societal interaction and impact, each reflecting the specific forms of impact and interaction that characterize different academic fields. The ReAct taxonomy was developed to register data about “productive interactions” and provide an overview of research activities within the social sciences and humanities (SSH). The purpose of the present research is to examine whether the SSH-oriented taxonomy is relevant to the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines when clarifying societal interactions and impact, and whether the taxonomy adds value to the traditional STEM impact indicators such as citation scores and H-index.

The research question was investigated through qualitative interviews with nine STEM researchers. During the interviews, the ReAct taxonomy and visual research profiles based on the ReAct categories were used to encourage and ensure in-depth discussions. The visual research profiles were based on publicly available material on the research activities of the interviewees.

The study provided an insight into how STEM researchers assessed the importance of mapping societal interactions as a background for describing research impact, including which indicators are useful for expressing societal relevance and impact. With regard to the differences between STEM and SSH, the study identified a high degree of cohesion and uniformity in the importance of indicators. Differences were more closely related to the purpose of mapping and impact assessment than between scientific fields. The importance of amalgamation and synergy between academic and societal activities was also emphasised and clarified.

The findings highlight the importance of mapping societal activities and impact, and that societal indicators should be seen as inspiring guidelines depending on purpose and use. A significant contribution is the identification of both uniformity and diversity between the main fields of SSH and STEM, as well as the connection between the choice of indicators and the purpose of mapping, e.g. for impact measurement, profiling, or career development.

The work sheds light on STEM researchers' views on research mapping, visualisation and impact assessment, including similarities and differences between STEM and SSH research.

As for academic papers, the customary methods for assessing the impact of books are based on citations, which is straightforward but limited to the coverage of databases. Alternative metrics can be used to avoid such limitations, such as blog citations and library holdings. However, content-level information is generally ignored, thus overlooking users’ intentions. Meanwhile, abundant academic reviews express scholars’ opinions on books, which can be used to assess books’ impact via fine-grained review mining. Hence, this study aims to assess books’ use impacts by conducting content mining of academic reviews automatically and thereby confirmed the usefulness of academic reviews to libraries and readers.

Firstly, 61,933 academic reviews in Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries were collected with three metadata metrics. Then, review contents were mined to obtain content metrics. Finally, to identify the reliability of academic reviews, Choice review metrics and other assessment metrics for use impact were compared and analysed.

The analysis results reveal that fine-grained mining of academic reviews can help users quickly understand multi-dimensional features of books, judge or predict the impacts of mass books, so as to provide references for different types of users (e.g. libraries and public readers) in book selection.

Book impact assessment via content mining can provide more detail information for massive users and cover shortcomings of traditional methods. It provides a new perspective and method for researches on use impact assessment. Moreover, this study’s proposed method might also be a means by which to measure other publications besides books.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce altmetric indicators and combine with traditional citation indicators to comprehensively evaluate the impact of academic journals from the perspective of multidimensional and multi-indicator fusion.

The authors take international multidisciplinary journals as an example, combining 14 traditional citation indicators of academic journals and introducing 14 altmetric indicators to build a comprehensive evaluation model of the impact of academic journals (academic impact and societal impact). At the same time, the authors systematically construct a journal evaluation indicator system from three dimensions. Then, the indicators data of three dimensions are evaluated by normalized processing, correlation analysis, reliability and validity analysis, PCA and factor analysis.

Two-dimensional and three-dimensional analyses can exactly provide some useful information for academic journals’ location in the respective coordinate systems. There are strong positive correlations among the measured indicators in the three dimensions, and each indicator has a significant consistency between whole and internal. The correlation coefficient between FD1 and FD2 is 0.888 with a strong positive correlation. It shows that the traditional citation indicators provided by WoS and Scopus database are highly consistent, and they are comparable and alternative in evaluating the academic impact of journals. The correlation coefficients of FD1, FD2 with FD3 are 0.831 and 0.798. There are strong positive correlations among them, which indicate that the evaluation of journals’ societal impact based on altmetrics indicator can be considered as a potential supplement to academic impact evaluation based on citation and to reflect the multidimensional nature of journals impact in an immediate way.

Multidimensional and multi-indicator perspective evaluation can provide references for the selection of impact evaluation indicators and model optimization of academic journals, and also provide new ideas for improving the status of the impact evaluation of academic journals.

The authors explore the emergence of altmetrics and Open Access (OA) publishing and discuss why their adoption in the management field lags behind other fields such as life sciences. The authors draw on the status literature to discuss the knowledge production and consumption underpinned by the ‘Impact Factor’ metric and high-status ‘Toll Access’ journals and their implications. The authors explain the rise of altmetrics and OA publishing and their implications on the production and consumption of knowledge. The authors then examine the current situation, challenges and offer reflections on the management field’s progression towards a more open research regime in the digital era.

The purpose of this paper is to indicate the place of assessment of the impact of libraries in the overall quality evaluation of these institutions. In the paper, an attempt has been made to separate the concepts of the impact and values of library services and, according to the designated scope, the most important areas of research, methods and indicators for the assessment of the impact of academic libraries were characterized. The focus was on the most important areas, i.e. on the impact of libraries on didactics and academic research, information literacy and on its assessment in the cultural and environmental aspect.

A literature-based overview of actual insights on tasks and areas, methods, indicators research on the impact of academic is provided.

The author has determined that the analysis of the impact of academic libraries can mainly concern the following areas: information (influence on didactics, research and information competence of users), cultural and environmental. That is why it is worth analyzing the most important methods and indicators of research on the impact of academic libraries in these areas. The best way to research the quality of libraries, and especially to determine its impact on users and the environment, is to use a mixed methodology – a whole set of quantitative and qualitative methods and techniques. Triangulation can involve the use of both qualitative and quantitative data or the use of multiple methods to develop one type of data.

However, these methods were used to study the impact of academic libraries, whose results do not determine the financial value.

The paper shows the methods of research on the quality of the functioning of academic libraries with a special emphasis on the study of their impact on users and the social environment.

The paper shows the methodology of determining the social role of academic libraries.

The paper intends to add to the body of knowledge about the research methodology for the impact of academic libraries.

The purpose of this paper is to develop new conceptual tools for analyzing how contemporary collaborative academic work is organized on micro-level, and its social and economic impact, in broad terms. Thus it makes a contribution towards a better view on how contemporary academics organize their professional activities in light of profound changes to the framework conditions of academic work, and a better view on the productivity and potentially very wide societal impact of academia.

Based on previous research, the arguments are developed conceptually. The paper builds both on previous empirical findings and strong traditions in organization theory (resource dependence theory) and innovation studies.

The paper achieves a synthesized conceptual view on impact of academia, strongly related to how individual academics organize their professional activities today, given the recent profound structural changes to the academic system. The paper launches resource dependence as a key concept for understanding contemporary academic work in a collaborative context, and sequences of impact as a key tool for conceptualizing the very varied role of academia in society.

While building strongly on previous research, the paper is conceptual in nature and thus its value lies chiefly in assisting future studies.

The contribution can assist in policymaking by promoting the achievement of more accurate and better balanced models and appraisal schemes.

The paper has theoretical originality and its synthesized argument about organizing and impact is of high value for current scholarly debate on these topics.

Many early-career researchers (ECR) are motivated by the prospect of creating knowledge that is useful, not just within but also beyond the academic community. Although research facilities, funders and academic journals praise this eagerness for societal impact, the path toward such contributions is by no means straightforward. In this essay, we address five common concerns faced by ECRs when they strive for societal impact. We discuss the opportunity costs associated with impact work, the fuzziness of current impact measurement, the challenge of incremental results, the actionability of research findings, and the risk of saying something wrong in public. We reflect on these concerns in light of our own experience with impact work and conclude by suggesting a “post-heroic” perspective on impact, whereby seemingly mundane activities are linked in a meaningful way.

Impact has generated much discussion in higher education in recent years, and it is not abating. This chapter lays the groundwork to build an understanding of what impact is, where it has come from and where it is likely to be going in higher education. The various roles of universities and academics and the value of knowledge generation and dissemination to communities outside of academia are explored. Understanding impact and how it is enacted, monitored, evaluated and reported is essential to position impact within one's academic practice. While various definitions of impact have been adopted in different contexts, the focus is on leveraging those definitions as an academic. The language of impact is important as it determines how some disciplines are privileged and others potentially are disadvantaged. The chapter encourages academics in the latter category of disciplines to be active in helping shape the conversation around impact in their contexts. The final section discusses where impact may be going within higher education, how to get the most out of the book as a researcher and what each chapter contributes to becoming an impactful researcher. There is no one right way to be an academic; the reader is encouraged to use each chapter to help hone and refine their academic trajectory given their own epistemological beliefs.

This study aims to highlight the importance of developing academic research in tourism and hospitality management into a more responsible approach, applying a multistakeholder model. This multistakeholder approach forces the tourist community to be considered when identifying the gaps and impacts of academic research.

This study suggests action research as one of the appropriate methodological approaches for conducting responsible research, as action research allows challenges to be overcome through the interaction of researchers and stakeholders. Principles of responsible research are indicated and exemplar studies that use action research are described.

Proposals and recommendations for responsible research are identified, such as demand-driven research, action research as a methodological approach and a way to address societal challenges, and the importance of considering the research ecosystem. In addition, some advantages (funding, reputation and legitimacy) and barriers (resources and publication) of responsible research are explained.

Practical implications are described. Conducting responsible research is oriented toward identifying real practical implications proposed and validated by the tourist community instead of being proposed solely by the researchers.

This paper emphasizes the need to work together with the tourist community and their stakeholders to enhance the real societal impact of academic research in tourism and hospitality management.

The authors would like to raise a self-critical debate for the future enrichment of research in the tourism industry. Research in this industry can contribute to solving significant societal problems. Responsible research can help scholars to be part of the solution to these challenges, working together with different tourism stakeholders.