Whether you’re an early career researcher, or at a more advanced stage in your career trajectory, chances are that you are under increased pressure to increase the impact of your research. Impact itself is a somewhat nebulous term, but my understanding is that it encompasses things like citations (academic impact) and real-world applications of your research (external impact)

What is perhaps less clear is exactly how to achieve this goal. To help with this, the LSE Impact of Social Sciences group have produced a helpful handbook entitled Maximising the Impacts of Your Research: A Handbook for Social Scientists, where you can find advice on understanding and maximising impact.

What makes this handbook useful?

The authors note that:

In the past, there has been no one source of systematic advice on how to maximize the academic impacts of your research in terms of citations and other measures of influence. And almost no sources at all have helped researchers to achieve greater visibility and impacts with audiences outside the university. Instead researchers have had to rely on informal knowledge and picking up random hints and tips here and there from colleagues, and from their own personal experience. This Handbook remedies this key gap and opens the door to researchers achieving a more professional and focused approach to their research from the outset.

What can you find in this handbook?

The handbook addresses both academic and external impact, and some of the topics it covers include:

• What shapes the citing of academic publications?
• Tracking citations, including new-internet based tracking systems
• Key measures of academic influence
• Strategies for getting better cited
• External (i.e., non-academic) research impacts

Download the handbook

The book, Maximising the Impacts of Your Research: A Handbook for Social Scientists, can be accessed by clicking on the button below: