Indicators for the Social Impact of Social Sciences and Humanities Research: The FP7 IMPACT-EV Project

There is a big concern in the international scientific community to guarantee that Social Sciences and Humanities research (hereafter SSH) has a social impact in relation to the major concerns shared by all its citizens. This is in fact a key goal of all SSH research, on the one hand, because citizens and politicians are interested in research outcomes which serve to improve society, and on the other hand, because the creation of SSH knowledge will be appreciated and maintained if it is relevant for society, and not only for researchers. Nonetheless, these impacts have recently been critically contested. Lack of adequate tools for comprehensively assessing impact, particularly concerning social impact, and indicators of poor impact of funded SSH research has been the object of concern for the European Commission, and it is being discussed today in academic forums. In that frame the IMPACT-EV project has been selected by the 7^th Research Framework Programme of the European Commission to develop a permanent system of selection, monitoring, evaluation (ex-ante, in itinere and ex-post) and comparison of the impact and outcomes from SSH research, taking into account the latest quantitative and qualitative evaluation tools, identifying new ways of implementing them and exploring new standards and indicators that complement existing impact assessment processes. As special attention will be paid to the analysis of social impact of SSH research, the IMPACT-EV project will analyse and systematize indicators for both ex-ante and ex-post evaluation of the social impact of SSH research. In this paper, first results of the IMPACT-EV project will be presented to an international audience.