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To identify the papers, and publishing journals, describing psychiatry, surgery and paediatrics research funded by the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK. To make comparisons with non‐NHS research and examine the journal impact factors, and importance to clinicians, of journals publishing the most NHS research. To consider the implications, including those for research assessment.

Existing databases were examined: the research outputs database (ROD), which contains information on UK biomedical papers; NHS ROD, which contains details of papers on ROD funded by the NHS; lists of journal impact factors. These were combined with selective findings from surveys conducted to identify journals read and viewed as important for clinical practice by psychiatrists, surgeons and paediatricians.

In each specialty many papers publish NHS‐funded research and they out‐number the non‐NHS papers in the ROD. They appear in a wide range of journals but in each specialty one journal is clearly the most used. The impact factors of journals publishing the most NHS research vary considerably. In each specialty the journal containing most NHS publications is widely perceived to be important by clinicians.

Much NHS‐funded research is also funded by other bodies. Clinician survey response rates were between 38 per cent and 47 per cent. The analysis could be extended to other specialties.

Papers published in the few journals in each specialty that are viewed as important by clinicians could be given additional credit in assessments.

This paper describes outputs from NHS research and shows how assessment could be extended.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect critically upon current debates and tensions in the governance of research in the UK and more widely, particularly the imperative that social science research should demonstrate impact beyond the academy.

Drawing implicitly upon the Bevir’s theory of governance, the paper positions discourses about “research excellence and research impact” as elite narratives that are rooted genealogically in forms of managerial audit culture which seek to govern the practices of social science academics. The paper reviews relevant literature, draws upon key contributions that have shaped debate and refers to the author’s own research and experiences of “research impact”.

Initiatives such as the UK’s “Research Excellence Framework” can be understood as a form of governance that further enables already present neo-liberalising tendencies in the academy. The “impact agenda” has both negative (e.g. it can distort research priorities and can lead to overstatement of “real world” effects) and positive potential (e.g. to provide institutional space for work towards social justice, in line with long-standing traditions of critical social science and “public sociology”).

There is a need for more critical research and theoretical reflection on the value, threats, limitations and potential of current forms of research governance and “impact”.

To date, there are very few article-length, critical discussions of these developments and issues in research governance, even fewer that connect these debates to longer-standing radical imperatives in social science.