Last week it was announced that from 1st March 2020, Pathways to Impact and Impact Summaries will no longer be required in applications to the Research Councils. We wanted to provide some advice to academic colleagues who may be working on proposals, whilst we wait for updated guidance from UKRI.

Pathways to Impact were introduced by the Research Councils in 2009 to encourage and support researchers to realise non-academic impact. The two–page Pathways to Impact attachment is used to outline the applicant’s plans for engaging with non-academic research users, and for bringing about change beyond the academic world. The Impact Summary, limited to 4000 characters, describes who outside academia would benefit from the proposed research, and in what ways.

A statement from UKRI reiterated the importance of non-academic impact, and asserted that impact is now a core consideration of the grant application process. So we expect impact to remain a feature of funding applications after 1st March, however there’s been little information as yet about what this will look like.

Advice for Colleagues

In the meantime, our advice to academic colleagues is as follows:

1) If you are working on a grant application and will be ready to submit before 1st March – keep going (and all the best with the bid)!

2) If you are submitting after 1st March and are in the advanced stages of preparation, carry on and we can help you make use of your impact material in the required sections once the new guidance is made available. UKRI say that further details on the changes will be reflected in the individual call guidance.

3) If you are in the early stages of proposal development, continue to think about and plan for non-academic engagement and impact, but expect clarity on the call guidance soon.

You can contact the Knowledge Exchange and Impact team with any questions or concerns, and for help with the impact element of your proposal.

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

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