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The Research Landscape is Changing

Shifting business models, demanding more efficient publishing processes and creating new market opportunities
Advancements in Technology leading to significant evolution in the industry. Publishing formats and the underlying technologies need to keep pace with these changes
Growing pace of Open Access
Increased signatories of Dora, and calls to redefine the research assessment frameworks
Growing pressure on research to show the societal impact of their research in order to win funding
The ever increasing number publications, readers, and researchers calling for maximum exposure and discoverability; researchers and publishers have an unprecedented demand for readership and readers share a matching demand for readily available content

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The noise from the market is loud

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Why we are committed to supporting meaningful, real world impact, as a community

Championing fresh thinking for over 50 years.

Our core ethos is to help make a difference so that little-by-little, those in academia, or in practice, can unite to bring positive change in the real world.

Growing need to demonstrate research impact.

The traditional markers of influence such as citations are no longer enough
Stakeholders and our communities are demanding more accessible research
Research outputs need to support and drive economic growth and sustainable development for the benefit of societies

Emerald is a medium sized, independent publisher, HQ UK but global offices in 11 locations around the world, active in over 300 countries

Publish some of the best journals books and case studies in applied fields where solid academic evidence is needed to affect practice and policy.

We feel strongly that we have a key role and responsibility in not only supporting the impact agenda, but also in challenging outdated approaches to measuring effects. Therefore, we are leading the publishing charge towards meaningful impact. We will continue to work with our global author network to publish research which makes a difference, and invest further in the research community to support real world change.�

Emerald has committed to:

Support the community of practice to overcome barriers to impact, working in partnership with key agencies to strengthen connections between research and society

Challenge simplistic and outdated approaches to impact, shifting beyond metrics and celebrating impact of all shapes and sizes

Drive impact literacy in the research sector championing knowledge and skills development, and developing new tools and innovative approaches

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What Is Impact?

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The meaning varies globally

The definition we stand by:

Impact is the provable effects of

research in the real world.

It is the changes we can see (demonstrate, measure,

capture), beyond academia (in society, economy, environment),

which happen because of our research (caused by or contributed to).

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Impact is evolving

For years, “impact” has been synonymous with the “impact factor”
This is one measure of research quality and research worth; it has its benefits and its drawbacks
It also relates solely to journal outputs, rather than other research assets
Funders, researchers and institutions are now starting to think differently
Funders are looking for real return on investment – what provable benefit does research have on the real world?
This movement is at different stages globally, but gaining traction
It links heavily to open research in its broadest sense – removing barriers and ensuring access to research globally and across disciplines

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Impact is measured by where the effects of research are felt

Research conducted here

University

Society

Effects felt here

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Research and practice: on parallel roads

In a global survey of 1,600 Emerald authors:

97% said they believe their research has relevance outside academia
65% agree that co-creation with non-academics can produce highly-cited research
Only 36% said they felt incentivized to engage with non-academics
Only 15% said incentives from their organization were a reason to enter into an existing collaboration

To better understand the Real World Impact landscape, in 2017, Emerald commissioned a study to investigate the research-practice gap in business and management, surveying 1,600 Emerald authors and conducting in-depth interviews with practitioners.

Overarching findings:

Confirmation that the research-practice gap in business and management is real.

One of the funny examples about this gap is that about 60 percent of researchers believe that practitioners should learn academic language to better understand research, and about the same percentage of practitioners believe that researchers should be taught to write in a more accessible way.
So the gap just isn’t in what is being researched, but in how it is being communicated.

Business and management professional considered non-academic outlets more important than academic journals—and we are talking about research that is being disseminated, not just general management reading.
Researchers say they favour impact, but frequently ignore it in practice. The number one way they choose a journal is impact factor. Research with practical relevance ranks sixth for academics. First for professionals. This alone is probably leading to the longstanding idea that academic research frequently lacks relevance and accessibility

Academic researchers tend to purse academic impact over society impact, even though they agree that collaborating with non-academic organizations generally produces high cited research. That is consistent with what the literature has been telling us.

However, conducting practice-oriented researched can be more challenging and time-consuming, which acts as a deterrent, especially since few are being incentivised to conduct research with practical relevance.

Call to action: Challenging the current inertia requires a more fundamental restructuring of incentives for academics

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Leading the charge towards meaningful impact

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We are supporting impact by……

Creating debate

Supporting the need to improve how research is assessed

Showcasing the stories of new approaches

Celebrating the changemakers

Co-creation

Developing our understanding in tandem with a group of external partners.

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�Global attitudes to research impact

Change ready report 2019

The results of the change ready survey sent to 95,673 researchers from Emerald’s Literati in 188 countries worldwide. 1,096 people in 102 countries responded to the survey.

40% of participants expect the priority of measuring real-world impact to change in their institution within the next 12-18 months. In 2018, only 27% agreed that priorities would change
61% of respondents reported traditional incentives as the top challenge
Only 15% of people said their institution is very open to change and doing something to drive it
27% agreed that the Research Office sets the impact metrics

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�Regional attitudes to research impact

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How we’re responding…

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�We are open to open research�

Emerald Open Research

A new open access publishing platform that supports rapid publication and allows authors to achieve transparency through an open peer review process and open data policy.

Rapid dissemination to a wider audience.
Supports reproducibility of results & research integrity.
Allows each article to be assessed on its own merits, not where it is published.
Enables others to build upon new ideas right away, wherever and whoever they are.
Findings become immediately accessible for everyone to use.
Reduces the barrier to collaborative research through data sharing, transparency and attribution.
Open & transparent peer review

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�We publish research aligned to the SDG’s�

Demonstrating the impact of interdisciplinary research that tackles the major challenges that are facing society today is important to us.

We have a growing number of research articles aligned to all 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

The Concise Guides to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals is just one example – a series of short books that critically analyse and assess the SDGs from a multi-disciplinary and a multi -regional standpoint.

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��We treat Researchers as more than a number��

As an Emerald author, you will benefit from:

Providing a more personalised, user friendly experience so more authors can get more research out there
Increased flexibility and choice of ways to publish
How-to guides & best practice
Alternative forms of funding beyond the APC
The chance to win an Emerald Research fellowship launching in 2020 (Interdisciplinary, aligned to real impact awards)

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