What is it?
Records of Impact may help document activities related to research engagement or leading to impact, to draft and refine your impact statements and evidence, and to prepare impact stories that can be reused for multiple purposes:
- Write multiple impact narratives within your internal profile.
- Include information about your relationship and Griffith colleagues' relationship to the impact.
- Link impact narratives to research outputs and funding.
- Attach evidence to support the impact claim if available.
- Give your impact narratives a title.
- List external contributors to the impact narrative.
Add a record of impact
Access Records of Impact via the tile on your Elements homepage.
Select the + button to add a new impact record
In this section you can:
- Note whether you are the lead or making a contribution.
- Create a working title. Unique titles will be easier to locate and retrieve.
- Capture significant events of your impact in the narrative. Over time, you can add additional entries to show progress.
- List individuals outside your organisation who contributed to this impact.
Add additional people from Griffith to create relationships and give attribution to colleagues.
This is similar to how co-authors are added on a publication, thereby creating one shared record and avoiding duplication of effort.
To skip this step, click Done.
Attach evidence in the form of documents, links or contact details.
Each piece of evidence can be annotated with additional detail to explain the nature of the evidence.
- Documents: news articles, commentary, reviews, editorials, blogs, tweets, TV and video etc that create a link between the research and the claimed impact.
- Links:
- Check the link is correct by using Preview (will open in a new window so you don't lose any data).
- Can break and content can be removed or archived from websites and social media. Look for permanent links like DOI's, handles, official websites or repositories.
- Alternatively, consider capturing details in digital image, PDF or print and scan, then attach file.
- Contacts: names of journalists, reviewers, commentators, colleagues, government representatives, experts etc.
Edit and add information to impact records any time:
- Select the impact record you wish to edit from the Records of Impact tile.
- Click on the record title and select:
- Attach Evidence
- Edit record to update the narrative or add external contributors
- Manage evidence to add supporting evidence
- Create links to link a publication, grant or professional activity
- Users: add Griffith contributors here.
Narrative Of Events
When possible, capture significant events of your impact in the narrative. Over time, you can add additional entries to show progress.
Be as specific as is possible about the impact. For example:
- Identify the impact that occurred. For example:
- Created a new tool/program that is now used in practice.
- Improved health or education outcomes of a particular population.
- Helped save money for small businesses.
- Influenced policy such as advancing gender equity, or better environmental protection.
- Who was impacted (e.g., specific groups of patients, communities, government department etc.)?
- The extent of the benefit. For example:
- What did the benefit mean for people’s lives?
- What changes occurred after implementation or adoption of the research or parts of it?
- How many people were impacted?
- What was the cost reduction?
- Where the benefit occurred, geographic location and/or scale (e.g., Australia, Southeast Queensland, regional Victoria, Gold Coast city, Dong Thap Province in Vietnam, or Canada, UK and Ireland.
How to write an impact narrative View example narratives (staff only)
It is ideal if you can demonstrate a clear link between your research and the stated impact that occurred, and if you have some form of evidence to corroborate your impact claim.
For example, some researchers have survey information that helps to demonstrate the role of their research in driving the stated impact. Others gather quotes from external stakeholders involved in their research along the lines of "[insert researcher name]'s research was integral to ensuring that the program was implemented effectively/drove the outcomes we have been able influence."
We have a number of tools to help support you in writing an impact narrative, visit our dedicated Impact Hub.
Tips
As soon as evidence can be collected, remembering that this could be before the end of the research project, capture it in Elements so it is ready to be used again for reporting, grant writing etc. It also brings evidence out of silos and stores it in a secure, central location.
Write short or long narratives as they arise. Narratives can be developed or revisited at a later stage. By capturing qualitative impact as early as possible you have an ongoing narrative to which you can refer.
Link the impact to related publications, grants or conference proceedings. This helps to build links between research inputs (funding), the activities, as well as the resulting outputs (publications, conference proceedings) and outcomes.
Require Support or Questions?
Need Help?
All support requests are managed by Griffith Library in partnership with the Office for Research and Digital Solutions.
