Building the Concept of Research Impact Literacy

Impact is an increasingly significant part of academia internationally both in centralised assessment processes (eg. UK) and funder drives towards knowledge mobilisation (eg. Canada) Narrowly focused assessment or institutional ranking approaches can obscure the benefits of brokering research into practice. It is vital that academics, non-academic stakeholders and research managers alike fully comprehend how to generate and demonstrate impact. Derived directly from UK and Canadian experiences of supporting impact and knowledge mobilisation, this paper introduces the original concept of impact literacy. Implications of poor impact literacy for the successful mobilisation of research are discussed alongside requirements for associated skill development.