Research Engagement and Impact: Challenges and Opportunities

Over the next couple of years the minds of social work academics across Australia will concentrate on how to demonstrate the economic and social benefit of their research activities. This is because the 2018 Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) exercise will include, for the first time, measurement of the impact and engagement of university research. This move, part of the Australian Government’s National Innovation and Science Agenda, is not a surprising one as it follows the introduction of impact case studies in the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) (http://impact.ref.ac.uk/CaseStudies) and a 2012 Australian trial of similar case studies by the Group of Eight (Go8) and Australian Technology Network ([ATN] 2012). The Australian Research Council (ARC) is currently engaged in a project to develop quantitative and qualitative measures of impact and engagement; a consultation phase was concluded in June and a trial will take place in 2017. It has been claimed that the introduction of ERA has dramatically improved research productivity (Byrne, 2015), yet it remains to be seen if the impact and engagement changes will result in meaningful transformation of academic research to produce better community outcomes or if they simply result in strategic manoeuvring to present good impact stories.

Some of the challenges of measuring impact and engagement are becoming better documented. Clearly there are limitations with quantitative metrics, which tend to be output rather than outcome focused and thus miss a holistic picture of research performance (National Research Council, 2014). So too are there limitations in detailed narrative-style case studies, not least the substantial cost and time required to develop them. For example, the cost to universities of developing the impact case studies for the 2014 REF was estimated to be £55 million (a median of £7,500 per case study) (Manville et al., 2015). There are also challenges in identifying meaningful impact given that some impacts may be unknowable and the time lag between when the research was undertaken and when the impact was discernable can be considerable (Khazragui & Hudson, 2015). Even more concerning is a universal emphasis on positive impacts (Kings College London & Digital Science, 2015), without understanding properly, or simply ignoring, negative impacts. For social work, as well as other disciplines, there remain questions about what happens to conceptual and theoretical research for which it may be difficult to identify concrete outcomes but which nonetheless adds to the development of social work practice (Parker & van Teijlingen, 2012).

Of course social work researchers should be well positioned to demonstrate the impact of their work and the extent to which it is connected to the real needs and concerns of communities. Most social work research is applied and much of it directly relates to improving the lives of marginalised people and those accessing social work services. A lot of research is developed in collaboration with community organisations, and increasingly we are seeing practitioner–academic research partnerships to help build the stock of knowledge about what works in social work practice (e.g., Joubert & Hocking, 2015). Nonetheless, there remains a dearth of service user-led social work research in Australia (e.g., Hughes, Bigby, & Tilbury, 2016). Inclusion of service users as “research end user” panel members for the ERA assessment of engagement and impact may prompt some change in this direction.

How is the journal positioned to respond to these changes? Our special issue last year (vol. 68, no. 3) on applied research methods in social work provided more resources to support increasing the quality, and therefore the outcomes, of research. We have also published a number of papers in recent years evaluating the effectiveness and impact of social work programs and interventions (e.g., Grace & Gill, 2014; Gray, Lewis, Mokany, & O’Neill, 2014). More systematic reviews are being published (e.g., Reed & Harding, 2015), which distil knowledge about effectiveness for practitioners and policymakers to make use of. We also encourage small-scale evaluation research and case studies to be submitted to the Practice, Policy, and Perspectives (PPP) section. Further, over the next year we are planning to introduce a new feature that briefly summarises the main practice and policy implications, benefits or impacts of each article. We hope that this will assist authors to clarify the social value of their research and help readers to access short and easy-to-read “take home messages”. We also look forward to receiving more articles in the future that analyse the benefits and impact of social work research.

In 2016 it was pleasing to see that the reach of the journal increased. The 2015 impact factor increased to 0.667, which means that proportionately more people are citing papers in the journal than ever before. Two-thirds of articles citing papers published in the journal between 2010 and 2015 were from overseas. In terms of distribution, the number of full-text downloads of articles increased to over 105,000 in 2015, and the hard copy version of the journal is now received by over 10,000 individuals thanks to the increased size of the AASW membership. Over the past year, we received 228 submissions, including 29 PPP papers. We accepted just over 40% of articles submitted.

Over the past year 172 people were involved in reviewing papers for the journal, and I am most grateful for their contribution. A list of reviewers is provided at the end of this issue. One of these reviewers was Dr Bruce Lord, who died suddenly in April this year. Bruce had a long involvement in the journal, having served on the publications committee and then the editorial board since the early 2000s. In 2013 he was appointed chair of the editorial board, at the same time I took up the editor role, and we worked very closely together. Bruce reviewed a large number of articles over the years and each review was detailed and meticulously prepared. Of course the authors would never have known that he had reviewed their work but from their comments I know many appreciated the help he provided. Bruce’s loss has been deeply felt by many in the social work community in Australia and overseas.

This year we welcomed three new members to the editorial board: Associate Professor Stephanie Gilbert, Dr Karen Bell, and Associate Professor Helen Cleak. Dr Mary Whiteside was appointed as a second associate editor, alongside Professor Clare Tilbury. And Dr Rosalie Pockett kindly agreed to act as chair of the editorial board until this position is filled. Bruce’s passing meant that the appointment process for a new editor has been delayed, although I expect that someone will be appointed to this position during 2017. I wish to pass on my thanks to AASW colleagues, editorial board members, Taylor & Francis colleagues, and particularly Liz Morrison and Kerry Kustra for their support this year.

Finally, I would like to draw your attention to the Norma Parker Special Online Issue of Australian Social Work, which is available at http://www.tandfonline.com/rasw. This special issue features a series of articles critically analysing the Norma Parker Addresses given by successive AASW presidents between 1969 and 2015. The addresses were collated and the issue commissioned by Professor Christine Bigby, former editor of the journal, who provides an editorial for the special issue. Also included are five historical articles from the journal, including one by Norma Parker herself. The special issue was made possible by a bequest from Mary McLellan, editor of the journal from 1966 to 1975. The special issue provides a fascinating insight into the development of social work as a profession and the impact of historical events across this time period.