When research met policy – a perfect match online - Research Information

"There are many ways in which the realms of policy and academia can meet and interact, but there’s no getting away from the fact that their differing needs can make it complicated. Academics’ careers hang on them publishing ‘high impact’ (i.e. widely read and cited) journal articles. Policymakers need real-world evidence, ideally from their own countries, with evaluations undertaken to their timescales. The two often don’t coincide.

Thanks to the research excellence framework (REF), in the UK at least, there is now an incentive for researchers to demonstrate ‘impact’ in the real world. This includes delivering evidence of direct benefits of their work to policymakers. Equally, UK government departments are all now encouraged to publish ‘areas of research interest’ (ARIs) and to connect with researchers whose work relates to them.

But how would researchers find out about these ARIs? And how would government departments find relevant researchers?

To address this need, scholarly publishing platform Octopus.ac has developed a new feature integrating government ARIs in an easily searchable and interactive new function...."