STEMM academics' understandings of societal value in the context of the UK impact agenda

The decision to include non-academic ‘impact’ as a criterion in the last two rounds of the United Kingdom’s national assessments of academic research, the Research Excellence Framework (REF), has created a new indicator by which academics can distinguish themselves. However, little is known about how those academics whose research is promoted and recognised as ‘highly impactful’ themselves understand societal value and whether their work is shaped by policy discourses around impact. This chapter draws on in-depth interviews conducted with ten academics whose research achieved high ratings in the first round of REF impact assessment. These academics do appear to be in a minority in terms of how they understand societal value as central to their research but their research values and practices challenge, as much as they vindicate, the ‘impact agenda’ as it is being formally institutionalised in the UK.