Toward a Gentle, Generalizable Framework for Scholarly Impact Conversations

Abstract

As a research impact librarian based in a central university library, I have the opportunity to speak to

researchers across a variety of disciplines about how they might define, measure, and communicate

the impact of their work to others--particularly to those who might be evaluating them. I’ve been

developing a framework for such consultations, beginning with why and to whom the researcher

needs to communicate impact, and working backwards from there through a series of steps all the

way through to identifying useful, meaningful metrics and ensuring that they’ve planned their work well

to ensure that the necessarily metrics are captured/documented. I’ve tested out the framework on a

few different groups of researchers in a range of humanities and social sciences disciplines so far, but

with pretty lukewarm results. I am not sure whether this is because we’re doing something rather

unfamiliar and, in fact, quite challenging for the researcher; because I’m not yet practiced enough at

guiding them through this conversation; or because the framework needs refinement--maybe it’s a bit

of each! I propose to share my early versions of this consultation framework, as well as my

experiences using them in reference consultations with scholars. Then I hope to garner input and

feedback from the group on whether they have used similar frameworks (or see a use for them), what

changes they would make, and how they would approach these conversations with researchers. The

outcome will be (hopefully!) and improved draft framework--made openly available-- for librarians and

others to use in consultations about scholarly impact, particularly with researchers in fields where

citation-based measures of impact have not served well.